Quick Hits

It's been a long day, meeting with the Northern Alliance after our radio show. A few links before I fall asleep ...

Hugh Hewitt is inviting people to a virtual symposium on John Kerry's proposed ban on bunker-busting nukes, as well as his idea about sending nuclear fuel to Iran to see what they do with it. Follow the links ...

CQ reader Retired Military points out an interesting error on an absentee ballot in Michigan. Note which ticket the printing error affects. RM says he's confirmed that this only occurred in one county ...

Fox News apologized for a lame gag item that got posted to its website earlier from reporter Carl Cameron with a number of faked Kerry quotes in it. I can't work up a great deal of outrage over this, since Fox acknowledged Cameron's fubar immediately, apologized, and pulled the article. However, the faked quotes in the article should cause Fox to reconsider Cameron's assignment to the Kerry campaign. The appearance of hostility renders him somewhat less than credible. If you think that's a bit harsh, just think how you'd feel if it was reversed ...

The Anchoress, who earlier credited CQ as one of her inspirations, really needs your prayers and your comments. A beloved family member is "dying by inches," in her words, and she's written a powerful and moving post about the agony of watching someone you love slip away slowly.

That's all I can do tonight. More tomorrow.

ADD: INDC Journal has reviewed the tape of the first debate, and has detected a violation of the rules by John Kerry. I'm inclined to chalk it up in much the same way as the push-off by the Arizona Cardinals receiver that ended the Viking's season in 2003; the game's in the books now. However, I'll be in favor of strip-searching the candidate at the next debate as a delayed penalty ....

NY Times Reruns The Golden Oldies

Tomorrow's New York Times runs a 10,000-word article about prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear program being called a "smoking gun", "persuasive", with predictions of "significant impact". I agree, although not on the Bush campaign, as Barry Ritholtz suggests. I believe it will have significant impact on the New York Times, because as Tom Maguire and CQ reader Michael K note, the Washington Post ran an article fourteen months ago that tells the exact same story.

At issue is the national-security assessment of aluminum tubes sought by Saddam Hussein in 2000 from China. The administration determined that the type and size of the tubes indicated that they were to be used in a nuclear centrifuge. Now we know that was not the case, especially after the testimony and evidence of Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, but at the time the West had not been in Iraq for two years and had little information on the state of Saddam's programs. The Times article suggests that the Bush Administration deliberately chose the worst-case scenario rather than the more likely explanation that the tubes were meant for rocket production.

Unfortunately, so did the Post in August 2003, hardly making this a revelation. Not only that, but the Times article even uses the same source to produce the same story. Consider this from the Post:

His name was Joe, from the U.S. government. He carried 40 classified slides and a message from the Bush administration.

An engineer-turned-CIA analyst, Joe had helped build the U.S. government case that Iraq posed a nuclear threat. He landed in Vienna on Jan. 22 and drove to the U.S. diplomatic mission downtown. In a conference room 32 floors above the Danube River, he told United Nations nuclear inspectors they were making a serious mistake.

At issue was Iraq's efforts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes. The U.S. government said those tubes were for centrifuges to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb. But the IAEA, the world's nuclear watchdog, had uncovered strong evidence that Iraq was using them for conventional rockets.

Joe described the rocket story as a transparent Iraqi lie. According to people familiar with his presentation, which circulated before and afterward among government and outside specialists, Joe said the specialized aluminum in the tubes was "overspecified," "inappropriate" and "excessively strong." No one, he told the inspectors, would waste the costly alloy on a rocket.

In fact, there was just such a rocket. According to knowledgeable U.S. and overseas sources, experts from U.S. national laboratories reported in December to the Energy Department and U.S. intelligence analysts that Iraq was manufacturing copies of the Italian-made Medusa 81. Not only the Medusa's alloy, but also its dimensions, to the fraction of a millimeter, matched the disputed aluminum tubes.

And then there's this from tomorrow's Times:

According to a 511-page report on flawed prewar intelligence by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the agencies learned in early 2001 of a plan by Iraq to buy 60,000 high-strength aluminum tubes from Hong Kong.

The tubes were made from 7075-T6 aluminum, an extremely hard alloy that made them potentially suitable as rotors in a uranium centrifuge. Properly designed, such tubes are strong enough to spin at the terrific speeds needed to convert uranium gas into enriched uranium, an essential ingredient of an atomic bomb. For this reason, international rules prohibited Iraq from importing certain sizes of 7075-T6 aluminum tubes; it was also why a new C.I.A. analyst named Joe quickly sounded the alarm.

At the C.I.A.'s request, The Times agreed to use only Joe's first name; the agency said publishing his full name could hinder his ability to operate overseas.

It's good to know that the Times stays on top of the news. Either that, or David Barstow must be their editor in charge of reprints.

Does This Mean The Palestinians Passed The Global Test?

UN officials are investigating a video showing Palestinians loading suspicious, elongated objects into UN ambulances after Israel released the images and accused UN personnel of collaborating with the terrorists:

UN officials said Saturday they are investigating a claim by the Israeli military that Palestinian terrorists transported a rocket in a vehicle with UN markings, but accused Israel of having made false allegations in the past.

On Friday, the IDF released video footage taken from an unmanned aircraft, or drone, flying over the Jebalya refugee camp. The blurred black-and-white video showed three men walking toward the U.N. vehicle, including one who carried an elongated object. The army said the object was a rocket.

Don't expect too much from this investigation, however. As the above indicates, the UN "investigator" assigned to the case has started out his probe by assuming the Israelis are a bunch of liars:

"This won't be the first time false allegations have been made against us. Everyone who has seen the footage has told me the object looks more like a folded-up stretcher than anything else. Especially since it was being carried with one hand. A Kassam rocket would be too heavy for a man to carry with one hand.

"Unless we are talking about Goliath, (he) could hardly carry a Kassam rocket as a light object in one hand," Hansen told The Associated Press.

According to the IDF website, the Kassam rocket is about 2 meters long and weighs on average 5.5 KG (about 12 pounds).

"This is not the first time that we have allegations that turn out to be false or rather (are) based on very, very insufficient evidence," he said.

Twelve pounds is too heavy for one man to carry with one hand? No wonder the UN is so useless; nobody does any heavy lifting. I've seen and held gurneys, and I'd venture a guess that a typical model would be at least the same weight as a Kassam rocket. You would expect the UN to know that, but then, you'd also expect an investigator to investigate rather than demagogue.

It hardly speaks to the UN's supposed impartiality that after being presented with video evidence that Palestinians are using UN vehicles to transport weaponry, or at least appear to be doing something illegal with their ambulances, the first statement from the person they assign to the investigation blames the messenger for bringing it to their attention.

My attempts to view the video have not been very successful, but I've linked it anyway, in case the server response improves later on. (hat tip: CQ reader Amelia)

People Who Can't Think For Themselves Can't Tell Time, Either

The Washington Post has an unusual editorial in today's edition pointing out the efforts of DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe to hijack their Letters section for unpaid advertising. You have to read this to believe it, but apparently some of the mindless sheep he's driving can't tell time:

WE RECEIVED THE following letter from a woman in Yonkers, N.Y.: "Dear editor: This debate made it clear: John Kerry is a leader we can trust to tell us the truth when it comes to our nation's security. George Bush has had his chance; I'm ready for a new direction."

Cogent, succinct, personal -- everything we look for in a letter. So why are we writing about it here, instead of publishing it in the columns to the right? Unfortunately, the letter, perfect in every other way, arrived in our electronic in-box Thursday afternoon, four hours and 14 minutes before debate moderator Jim Lehrer posed his first question. ...

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe, for example, sent e-mails to supporters saying, "Immediately after the debate, go online and write a letter to the editor of your local paper. If you feel John Kerry commanded the debate and had a clear plan for fixing the mess in Iraq, put it in your letter. If you feel George Bush dodged tough questions on Iraq and didn't level with voters, put it in your letter." In 2000, "Republicans stole the post-debate spin," Mr. McAuliffe said, and an avalanche of letters would help prevent a recurrence.

For a party that seems hopelessly stuck on the 2000 election and whose candidate keeps demonstrating a September 10th cluelessness about national security, I suppose that living four hours and 14 minutes in the future represents an improvement for that Democrat.

Another Perspective On Freed Hostages

CQ (and more famously Power Line) reader Dafydd ab Hugh posted an interesting take in our comments on the two Italian hostages who were released unharmed, only to proclaim their captors' cause on their return. He makes an interesting connection between the Two Simonas and the Japanese hostages that were released earlier this year. In case anyone misses it there, I'm posting them here:

My wife was born and raised in Japan, and she at first was very upset about the Japanese "hostages" in Iraq. Sachi lives here in America (she's a US citizen), and she got on some Japanese bulletin boards, trying to find out what was going on.

She was startled to find that nobody on those boards seemed particularly sympathetic; and that was when she found out that the Japanese had already by and large concluded that the "kidnapping" was in fact a set-up: the Japanese who were taken were actually huge supporters of the insurgency, many were Moslems, and all had previously argued that the war itself was illegal and that Saddam should be put back in power (with an apology and reparations from America).

This was right after Japan had sent troops to Iraq to help rebuild the waterworks, and it shortly became clear, especially after the "hostages" returned, that Japanese Moslems had cooked up a scheme to try to intimidate the Koizumi government into pulling out of Iraq. Koizumi refused the bait and stood firm -- and lo and behold, the "hostages" were all released unharmed at the very time when Zarqawi had just started beheading hostages whose countries didn't roll over quickly enough.

I think there is a very strong liklihood that this is exactly what happened in the case of the Two Simonas. I suspect they are both secret converts to Islam, that they supported the insurgents long before they were "seized," that they never were in any danger, that the whole shebang was a set-up from the beginning. Now they're lauding their supposed kidnappers and attacking Italy, America, and the coalition.

It would be nice to see Berlusconi quietly begin probing the backgrounds of the Two Simonas. If they're clean, no harm, no foul: just keep the investigation to yourself, Sylvio. But if you strike paydirt, trumpet it to the skies. In Japan, the outpouring of sympathy by nearly everyone for the hostages has been replaced with anger and derision. If the Italian gals pulled the same sort of stunt, public opinion of them could turn on a dime.

I'd say looking into their backgrounds would be a good idea. The British and Dutch may already be taking that approach with hostage Kenneth Bigley, whose heartbreaking videos have caused a political firestorm in the UK for Tony Blair:

Dutch intelligence officers raided the home of Kenneth Bigley's brother last night. An intelligence officer from the Foreign Office is understood to have accompanied them to Paul Bigley's home in Amsterdam. The raid came amid claims that the British hostage was free to roam his kidnappers' home in Iraq and was "caged" only for terrorist videos.

Paul Bigley's computer was seized and he was interrogated about his alleged contact with the Tawhid and Jihad group, which yesterday claimed responsibility for Thursday's killing of at least 35 children in Baghdad.

The al-Zarqawi gang have proven adept at publicity. It wouldn't surprise anyone terribly that they might be good at infiltrating sympathetic Western groups, especially the kind that send aid workers operating under NGO umbrellas to Iraq for independent rebuilding efforts.

UPDATE: And just as I was posting this, Agence France-Presse reported that the Dutch denied that they "raided" Paul Bigley's home, but that Bigley cooperated with British investigators:

"There was no raid, no coercive measures were taken. Paul Bigley agreed to talk to the British police who had summoned him through us," said Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the national prosecutors' office, told AFP. He added that Paul Bigley had helped British police with their inquiries into his brother Ken Bigley's abduction in Iraq. ...

The Dutch spokesman said he could not confirm if Bigley's computer had been seized, but added that if British had taken anything, "it was done with the consent of Mr Bigley."

At the end of the report, Paul Bigley told AFP that he was "almost 100% certain" that Internet reports of his brother's release were authentic, and certainly if Kenneth Bigley is being held against his will in any way, that would be tremendous news. It seems like a bit of a coincidence that he would be released so soon after the raid or non-raid, whichever version you believe.

Italians Pay Million-Dollar Ransom For Islam Converts?

If the rumors are true and the Italians paid $1 million for the return of the "Two Simonas", they likely will ask for a refund now that the two women have started giving interviews after their return to Italy. The two women have turned into mouthpieces for the Islamofascists who terrorized them:

Italy's adoration of the "two Simonas", the women aid workers abducted in Iraq, began to sour yesterday, as the extent of their sympathy for the Iraqi fight against the allied occupation became clear.

Simona Pari, Simona Torretta and Lello Rienzi talk to the press
In their first big interviews given since their release in return for a reported $1 million ransom on Tuesday, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, gave their backing to insurgents opposing the allied forces. ...

"If you ask me about terrorism, I'll tell you that there is terrorism and there is resistance. The resistance struggle of people against an occupying force is guaranteed by international law."

No wonder the Islamists let them go; it sounds like they graduated magna cum laude from the al-Zarqawi Institute. Not only did they lecture the world on the "resistance" fighters, but had the nerve to crassly thank the Italian Islamic community -- and their captors, in Arabic, on Al-Jazeera -- for their release before bothering to acknowledge the Italian government or their Red Cross representatives. Simona Torretta even announced that she's studying Islam, but assures her Catholic countrymen that she's not going to convert ... for now.

Hope Berlusconi thinks he got his money's worth.

Typekey Update!

I just heard back from Laura at Six Apart about the Typekey frustrations:

You recently reported problems logging in with TypeKey on some weblogs and sites. Our technicians have made some changes on our servers. Their testing suggests that these changes have resolved the login problems. We would appreciate it if you could do some testing as well to see if you continue to experience the problems.

If you do, please contact us again with the following information:

1) What exactly happens when you attempt to sign in with TypeKey to post a comment?

2) What browser and operating system are you using?

Thank you.

Laura
Six Apart, Ltd

I tried this earlier tonight and it appears to be working properly. Feel free to test on this post to check it out.

Lipscomb: Kerry Wrote After-Action Report For Bronze Star

Thomas Lipscomb writes a fascinating article about his clever piece of detective work which demonstrates that John Kerry wrote the after-action report that led to his Bronze Star for an engagement that almost all witnesses claim never involved enemy fire. Lipscomb uncovered a 35-year-old operations order which narrows down the source of the story Kerry denies inventing:

A faded 35-year-old operations order recovered from the Naval Historical Center in Washington bears directly on the ongoing dispute between Sen. John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about who wrote the key after-action report that ended Kerry's service in Vietnam. The report appears in the official Navy records and is posted on Kerry's presidential campaign Web site.

The report details Kerry's participation in a naval operation on the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969, in such glowing terms that he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for pulling Special Forces officer James Rassmann out of the water while under heavy enemy fire. This third Purple Heart allowed Kerry to cut short his Vietnam tour after only four months.

Lipscomb reviews the action in the report and how it clashes with the memory of everyone except Rassmann and Kerry's crew. It talks about three miles of sustained enemy fire on both banks, something that Roy Hoffman says not only didn't occur that day, but never occurred under his command in Viet Nam. Larry Thurlow, who commanded the task force that day, insists that had they been met with that kind of withering enemy fire, he would have called in air support.

But Lipscomb puts on the gumshoes when he looks into the mysterious designation of the author given in the report: TE 194.5.4.4/1. This is not a random series of numbers, nor is it a geographical designation. The sequence refers to the command structure of Kerry's unit, or "task element" (TE).

194: Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, Commander of all Navy forces in Vietnam
5: Adm. Roy Hoffman, Commander of all Swift boats
4: Cmdr. Adrian Lonsdale
4: Cptn. George Elliot, CO of Kerry's base at An Thoi

The '/1' indicates that someone other than Elliot sent the report, and the 'TE' would have been 'CTE' had it been Thurlow, who commanded the task element that day. That leads to only three other officers, and Lipscomb traces their whereabouts:

According to a Navy communications expert, Chief Petty Officer Troy Jenkins, who has examined the message traffic, the report in question was sent from the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Spencer, Lonsdale's command ship, at 11:20 that night.

Only three of the officers on the mission that day were on the Spencer, John Kerry, Dick Pease and Donald Droz. Droz took the wounded from the mine explosion to be examined and treated at the Spencer, including the third officer, the severely wounded Dick Pease. Since the Spencer had no helipad for the evacuation of the wounded, Droz then had to return to the USS Washtenaw County, stationed about 25 nautical miles away, leaving only Kerry aboard the Spencer at the time the message was sent at 11:20 p.m.

Could Droz have somehow written the report? Lonsdale says command precedence of days in swift boat service alone rules this out. "According to the command procedure I set down, Kerry would have been the only logical candidate. Kerry had been in Vietnam since November. Droz just arrived at An Thoi in February." Thurlow adds, "I never liked the paperwork anyway. I was happy to have Kerry write them up."

And there is another factor. Thurlow ordered Droz to take care of the wounded after the action on the Bay Hap. Droz had ferried them 40 miles out to the Spencer and now had to take them 25 miles back to the USS Washtenaw County. Moving wounded on and off a 327-foot cutter from a 50-foot swift boat on the open sea was not something Droz was likely to leave unsupervised long enough to dash off a report. Kerry had no duties other than reporting to the sick bay, where according to his doctor he was seen at 7 that night. And he spent the night on the Spencer.

The Kerry campaign has always denied that Kerry wrote the after-action report that won him the Bronze Star. It looks like Lipscomb has demonstrated that Kerry's denials have been less than truthful. (via Instapundit)

Don Hewitt: No Such Thing As Anti-War War Hero

Don Hewitt, the creator of the original 60 Minutes who recently got pushed out by CBS, spoke out in a South Dakota radio interview on Rathergate and the election:

The creator of "60 Minutes," Don Hewitt, said Thursday he would not have done the story on President Bush's National Guard service that got CBS anchor Dan Rather in so much hot water. ...

"I never would have done the story," said Hewitt, who retired in June as the show's executive producer after 36 years. "I would have been very wary injecting myself into a campaign. You've got to be very careful that you're not perceived as doing the job that one of the two candidates should be doing himself."

Hewitt told the audience that the problem with running a gotcha story like that during an election is that it has to be perfect to be successful; one mistake, and "you're dead." But that's not all Hewitt found to criticize about Mary Mapes' obsession with the National Guard angle. Hewitt dismissed it as old news that had been given enough attention during the 2000 election, comments that call into question not just the story itself and Mapes' production judgement but also the editorial judgement of CBS News -- which points the finger at Dan Rather, its managing editor.

The AP also notes that Hewitt doesn't think much of John Kerry's campaign strategy, either:

Hewitt added that it was "stupid" for Kerry to have injected his Vietnam service into the presidential race, which opened the door for anti-Kerry groups such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Not only have previous presidential candidate war veterans avoided such talk, but Kerry had followed up his Vietnam service by becoming an outspoken opponent of the war, he said.

"You can't play war hero if it's about a war where you threw your medals away," Hewitt said.

Absolutely correct. I am surprised to hear that from Don Hewitt. I'm not surprised that the mainstream media ignored both ends of this story. (via Drudge)

Washington Papers Agree: Debate A Draw

It's not too often that one finds editorial agreement between the two DC papers, the Post and the Times, but both papers called last night's debate a draw. The Post gives its analysis in its unsigned editorial:

The center of the debate was Iraq, though the candidates differed more on past actions than on future plans. Mr. Bush stoutly defended his decision to go to war and its results; Mr. Kerry forcefully criticized that decision and the war's management and offered himself as a more competent commander in chief. But Mr. Kerry had a more complicated position to defend, and it showed at times. He called the war a mistake and a diversion, but later said that American soldiers were not dying for a mistake. He implied that money being spent in Iraq could be better spent on prescription drugs for seniors, but insisted, "I'm not talking about leaving. I'm talking about winning." ...

In the end the candidates drew sharply distinct portraits of themselves and each other. Mr. Bush stressed his own resoluteness, which Mr. Kerry suggested included a dangerous tendency to be divorced from reality. Mr. Kerry stressed his commitment to alliances and patient leadership, which Mr. Bush suggested could mean weakness. Both performed credibly enough to keep voters tuned in for the next debate.

The Times uses an analysis by James G. Lakely to reach much the same conclusion, but in greater depth:

President Bush and Sen. John Kerry essentially stuck to their scripts, landed few significant blows and fought to a draw in last night's opening presidential debate, political strategists from both parties said.

The strategists said the outcome probably will give a minor boost to Mr. Kerry who has been flagging in recent polls, but also will buffet Mr. Bush's reputation for steadfastness that has been credited with swaying undecided voters to his camp.

"I think both have done well," said Republican political consultant Frank Donatelli. "Both were well-prepared and had good command of the facts. Most people's views probably won't be changed by this debate. Partisans will find plenty of reasons for reinforcement for their present biases."

Democratic political consultant Scott Segal said that Mr. Kerry lived up to his reputation as "a very good debater" and that Mr. Bush held his own.

I think there were enough highlights for each candidate to make a couple of political commercials, although I'm hearing that the Democrats are making one with nothing but George Bush's facial expressions ... as if they haven't tried belittling Bush enough in this electoral cycle. Republicans will certainly make one from the "global test" remark that John Kerry must wish he'd skipped:

A Democratic consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the president "turned in a pretty solid performance."

"I think that loyal Democrats were hoping the president's head would fall off during the debate," he said.

Mr. Bush came across as "calm, folksy and grounded," but that each man got "a little testy" once they started to hurl some of their campaign stump-speech accusations at each other, Republican political consultant Bob Moran said.

"Bush missed some opportunities, but that misses the point," Mr. Moran said. "Kerry made the biggest stumble tonight by citing a 'global test' for pre-emptive military action to protect America."

Hugh Hewitt called that point the "game, set, match" of the debate. The answer came near the end in response to Jim Lehrer's question about pre-emption, and this is what Kerry said:

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you‘re doing what you‘re doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons. ...

BUSH: Let me—I‘m not exactly sure what you mean, “passes the global test,” you take preemptive action if you pass a global test.

My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure.

While I think this was one of Bush's better points, I think he was far more effective in deriding Kerry's insistence that he could build better alliances while denigrating the allies we already have as "coerced and bribed" and could get greater international cooperation in Iraq while calling it "the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time." Kerry answered neither of those challenges, nor could he, and I would suggest that Bush keep playing on that, post-debate.

I still believe this debate was an effective draw, and that Kerry might at best pick up two points. That's not good enough for a candidate who has a six- to eight-point gap. It could help him hang on in Minnesota -- maybe -- but he hardly won Wisconsin back. He needed Bush's head to fall off, as the Democratic consultant said, and it didn't happen.

Kerry would pay tribute to nK

One point Candidate Kerry has remained consistent on during last night's debate is his plan to open bilateral talks with nK. When asked how he would deal with what he perceived as the greatest threat to America, Kerry responded, "I'm going to immediately set out to have bilateral talks with North Korea."

President Bush immediately rebutted this idea, explaining:

Again, I can't tell you how big a mistake I think that is, to have bilateral talks with North Korea. It's precisely what Kim Jong Il wants. It will cause the six-party talks to evaporate. It will mean that China no longer is involved in convincing, along with us, for Kim Jong Il to get rid of his weapons. It's a big mistake to do that.

We must have China's leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves. And if you enter bilateral talks, they'll be happy to walk away from the table. I don't think that'll work.

President Bush is correct that multilateral talks are the only diplomatic method which has any chance of putting an end to the Jonger's nuclear ambitions. But there's more.

nK has been characterized by many academics and political analysts as a "tribute-seeking state" which thrives and survives by demanding respect and rewards from other states. Since 1993 Pyongyang has used its nuclear program to blackmail the US into offering recognition, security assurances, and economic benefits. Kim Jong Il plays this game well, always recognizing when he has gone too far in his demands and backing away from the ledge of war.

In 1994 President Clinton made the mistake of paying tribute to nK, allowing former president Carter (aka the "Great Appeaser") to negotiate with Kim Il Sung. nK learned its nuclear program was its greatest bargaining chip, gaining it the desired tribute from the US. This became evident during the extended negotiations for the Agreed Framework, where the US and South Korea gave the North light water reactors in return for a nuclear freeze: the nK delegation insisted that the agreement characterize the reactors as being provided by and built by the US, even though the reactors were in fact designed and purchased by South Korea.

Today nK is once again leveraging its nuclear weapons program to gain tribute from the US, and Senator Kerry is willing, even anxious, to pay it to them.

US, Iraq Attack Samarra Terrorists

The BBC reports that the US and Iraqi forces have moved into Samarra with brigade strength and coordinated jet and tank attacks on 2,000 fighters in the city has been a terrorist stronghold in answer to the ongoing kidnapings and attacks. They have killed 80 terrorists and retaken key positions in the city:

The US military says it has killed more than 80 insurgents in a major offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra. US and Iraqi forces say they took control of government and police buildings in the restive city, in a raid that began just after midnight.

The US claim that 80 insurgents had died came after local doctors said at least 20 civilians had been killed.

The attack targeted 2,000 fighters who the US says have made Samarra a base for attacks across the country.

This is the opening salvo in a larger plan to eliminate terrorist strongholds still left, such as in Fallujah, Sadr City, and the handful of other hot spots in the Sunni Triangle before the election. The tactics have changed since April's abortive mission in Fallujah; this time they entered the city in force and used all the tools at their disposal, rather than set siege and waited for the residents to leave first. Samarra will be a test ground for the strategy in Fallujah, and one has to think that the hammer will fall there soon after Samarra is brought under the control of the Iraqi government.

Der Spiegel: Bush Won Debate

I'm sure we will all peruse various analyses about last night's presidential debate to get a sense of how the two candidates were received, but I thought that both of them did well enough for partisans to claim victory, maybe giving Kerry an edge on debate style and Bush at least an edge on substance. In particular, I expected the European media to promote Kerry's performance, in part because (like their American counterparts) they prefer Kerry to Bush and in part because they prefer his debating style. Imagine my surprise when CQ reader KPowell referred me to the center-left magazine Der Spiegel, which claims that Bush won on points:

Die teils scharfen Angriffe von Kerry ließen den amtierenden Präsidenten Bush weitgehend unbeeindruckt: Mit der Darstellung seiner Außenpolitik und des Irak-Konflikts konterte Bush die Attacken seines Herausforderers. Für SPIEGEL ONLINE analysiert das Forschungsinstitut Medien Tenor die erste von drei TV-Debatten im US-Wahlkampf...

Did you get all that? Well, the Babelfish translation isn't much more clear than that, but if you can pick your way through the linguistic horrors it inflicts, you'll find that Der Spiegel's 15 analysts determined that Bush remained presidential in the face of constant attack by Kerry. Bush also showed more warmth, empathy, and humor than Kerry did.

Even more interesting and more objective, in tallying up the various questions and statements, the analysts determined that Bush's statements and presentations on foreign policy were 21% more positive than Kerry's, and that substatantively, Bush scored higher as well. Bush also promoted his own policies far more than attacking Kerry's by a 3-1 margin, while Kerry spent 72% of his time attacking Bush rather than promoting his own. Der Spiegel also compares this with the Gore-Bush debates, where both men used the time to promote themselves, 69% and 88% respectively.

In other words, Kerry left the impression with these analysts that, as has been the case throughout the campaign, he debated as the Not-Bush rather than as a candidate standing on his own. If he continues to campaign that way, I don't see how he can get the needle to move much further above the 42-44% range.

The Chinese Rebuttal To John Kerry

John Kerry tried to put George Bush on the defensive in tonight's debate by faulting Bush's refusal to use bilateral talks to disarm North Korea. Bush insisted that the US needed global leverage, and shortly afterwards, the BBC provided Bush with some support for his position:

The US and China have said they were confident North Korea will return to six-party talks to end the stand-off over Pyongyang's nuclear programmes. US State Secretary Colin Powell said after talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing the format was "what we should be concentrating on".

Mr Li described the talks as the "only feasible and correct option".

After excoriating Bush for not working hard enough to build a larger coalition to handle Iraq, Kerry reversed course and accused Bush of too much multilateralism on North Korea. Kerry said he'd hold concurrent multilateral and bilateral talks -- which Bush rightly pointed out would cause the multilateral talks to become redundant and the four other nations to walk away. If anyone paid attention to that exchange, China just confirmed Bush's contentions and his plans for dealing with the NoKos.

When we say Kerry is incoherent and vacillating, this is a great example of what we mean. (via Instapundit)

Liveblog: Debate #1

7:30 - I started watching C-SPAN, but the inane questions being asked on all sides drove me to AMC to watch a bit of Escape From New York. It seemed like the intelligent choice ...

7:39 - Michelle Malkin -- thanks for your link and your kind comments!

7:47 - Back to C-SPAN, just in time to see Donna Shalala introduce Lauren Williams (according to Shalala), but C-SPAN says it's Janet Brown. Teresa Heinz Kerry gets introduced ahead of Laura Bush, and she's chewing something as she walks up ...

7:51 - Jim Lehrer tells the audience to sit on their hands and shut up for 90 minutes, and now he says, "Don't make me pull this car over, kids!!" Oh, great, now the wives are the Hall Monitors. Yes, I can see this is "serious business", as Lehrer puts it ...

7:54 - If they don't want audience reaction, why have an audience? Why bother with the town-hall format at all?

7:57 - Northern Alliance links: Mitch, King, Rocket Man, blogging from here.

8:03 - Nice warm handshake and a laugh to start things off ...

8:05 - I have a better plan, I have a better plan -- well, you're on stage, let's hear it! ...

8:07 - Free nations. Not a bad start for either one ...

8:10 - One reason only for taking out Saddam? Outsourced the job? Where do you want me to begin? I guess Kerry's decided to take the snotty route ...

8:14 - John Kerry, so far, is doing pretty well. George Bush had a great response to Kerry's question ... but nothing we haven't heard before from both ...

8:18 - No body armor? Did he not vote against the funding for that?

8:19 - Bring the allies back to the table -- what if they're not hungry?

8:23 - So far, both men seem to be doing fairly well. This seems to be the Battle Of The Alpha Males, though. A lot of finger-jabbing and fist-pumping. Maybe it's just the adrenaline of the moment, but I think both men were coached to project strength. Kerry does seem to be more comfortable with the format, a product of his 20-year Senate career ...

8:29 - Bush dropped the $87 billion bomb, and Kerry's response was pretty damned weak, and obviously they were working on it this week. It needed more work ..

8:30 - "Last man to die for a mistake" -- Kerry now says that it's not a mistake. It's a mistake, it's not a mistake -- which is it? I mean, HE JUST GOT DONE SAYING THAT INVADING IRAQ IS A MISTAKE! Sheesh! ...

8:31 - No, it's like invading North Africa in response to Pearl Harbor, Senator. It's the difference between tactical and strategic thinking. Oh, Halliburton just made its first appearance. Now Bush gets to run the list of allies in Iraq, and he's making minced meat out of Kerry's arguments ...

8:34 - Kerry forgot Poland??? And Bush just chewed him out over the "coerced and bribed" comments earlier. Scoring big points here.

8:40 - He cut it off , sort of arbitrarily -- well, after France stated publicly that they would never support the use of force in Iraq. That's when we stopped trying to get the UN to get off its butt. Kerry's meeting with foreign leaders again. Osama needed Iraq to attract followers??

8:42 - He's had one consistent position (at a time) ...

8:45 - A good, thoughtful answer at the halfway mark from Bush on "was it worth it" - and yet another Viet Nam combat reference. Not confuse the war with the warriors?? Yes, it happened before -- and you were a large part of the reason for it, Senator!

8:48 - Not "you break it, you fix it", "you break it, you own it". Kind of a silly muff to pull at that point ...

8:49 - How does Kerry think that there is a difference between "pull troops out in six months" and "pull the troops out in six months if we're successful"? Ah, he says that Bush has imperial designs on Iraq because we're building bases in the outer parts of the Iraq. Well, we're fighting a war on Islamofascist terror -- does Kerry propose fighting it from Germany? Or maybe Fort Dix?

8:53 - George Bush needs to stand up straight. He's hunching over. Looks bad. Other than that, he's doing great, plainly speaking. I have to say that Kerry sounds better than I thought he would, but he's delivering more contradictions as he goes along ...

8:57 - Outsourced the attack on Osama -- and now Kerry's showing why he's clueless on the war on terror. He says that the sanctions were weakening Saddam. What about all those billions he got from UNSCAM? Did the weight tire him out?

8:59 - Darfur is Bush's fault?

9:00 - Oh, Lord, Kerry voted AGAINST the Kyoto Protocol, and now he blames Bush for not signing it. Instead of attacking that, Bush brings up the ICC, but he finished on a strong point -- he's looking out for American interests, not looking to win a beauty contest.

9:03 - Iran: Kerry would give the mullahs nuclear fuel. Up to now, only Edwards had offered that, and it's a stupid, stupid idea. Now he thinks that North Korea only started cheating after 2001. Yeah, sure.

9:08 - Why don't we have troops in Darfur? Because we're at war now against terrorists, which has to come first. Terrorists are in Iraq. "We could never allow another Rwanda" ... but who allowed the first one?

9:10 - Bush seems more in command of the details than Kerry does. He's made several factual corrections of Kerry that stick ...

9:11 - Character. Actually, both men took the soft approach on this answer, which is smart ... "I've never wavered" -- well, he's trilled quite a bit ...

9:17 - He's going to shut down another weapons program -- good flashback to 1984, Senator.

9:22 - Good question on Russia, and Bush takes us back to Beslan and ties Russian policy to the war on terror. Kerry talks about visiting the KGB and seeing reams of files. Was Sandy Berger there then? ...

9:25 - I think we're coming to the closing statements soon, and thank God. 90 minutes is too long...

9:26 - Kerry: Different set of convictions, respected again in the world, get your kids home and win the peace (in that order). "I'm not talking about leaving ..." Well, that's all he's been talking about for the past month. He got a chance to throw in a Viet Nam reference again...

9:28 - Bush: Weakness will push world towards tragedy, no draft, fight terrorists around the world instead of here, will put America first. Vision of democracy as a cure for terrorism and the oppression. "We've climbed a mighty mountain, and I've seen the valley below, and it's a valley of peace." Nice close.

9:31 - Both candidates greet their wives, Kerry taking the time to give an extra-long liplock on Teresa.

My assessment: Personally, I don't think either man did badly, although I think that Bush mauled Kerry about the "coerced and bribed" remark and Lockhart's "Allawi is a puppet". Also, his in-debate reversal on whether invading Iraq is a mistake will get some play. I'd give the edge to Bush, but you know I'm biased. Now C-SPAN has the lame phone callers, so I'll switch to Fox instead.

Good panel discussion on Fox. I don't agree with everything being said, but Brit Hume is leading the discussion and doing a good job of moderating it ...

Another thought -- one of Kerry's problems is that Bush has a number of home runs he can hit, thanks to Kerry's vacillations over the past nine months, and Bush hammered on Kerry for his policy flip-flops all debate long. Kerry's counter is that Bush is too resolute, which hardly damages a leader during wartime. ...

I missed the Republican spinmeister, but Joe Lockhart claims that the debate will be all about the "annoyed smirk". Eh? Actually, I think that sells this debate short. It actually produced substantive policy statements and differences between the candidates, and they both behaved in respectful and professional manner. Is Lockhart really that desperate? ...

Last thought from the Fox panel - Bush may have edged Kerry, but the polls will narrow slightly, and Kerry lives to fight another day. About what I'd say, too. But I think Poland will continue to dog Kerry, and now that I think about it, he forgot Australia, too. Kerry still has the same problems that he had going in, and expect Bush to hammer on those more in the next couple of weeks.

What Good Are Debates?

As I prepare to live blog tonight's debate from my den (instead of at Our House, where the rest of the Northern Alliance are free from my germs), it's worth revisiting my previously-expressed opinion on the usefulness of these gladitorial spectacles that we stage three or four times every election cycle. Unfortunately, I got caught agreeing with Teresa Heinz Kerry -- always a dangerous position:

I completely agree with Teresa Heinz Kerry:

Great Moments in Democracy, Part 9. Will someone please drive a stake through the heart of the debate idea now?

I wrote that last November, and my opinion hasn't changed much since then. I still think presidential debates are so artificial and uninspiring that viewers only tune in to either reinforce their already-made choice or to look for "gotcha!" moments. Neither one are particularly edifying for political discourse.

Who knows? Maybe tonight will change my mind ...

Kerry Campaign Throws A Tantrum

Ron Fournier reports that aides to John Kerry had an "angry exchange" with the Debate Commission about the placement of timer lights on the lecterns for tonight's presidential debate:

Democratic candidate John Kerry's campaign demanded Thursday that the lights signaling when a speaker's time has expired during debates with President Bush be removed from the lecterns because they are distracting, but the commission hosting the debates refused.

An angry exchange between representatives of the Kerry campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates took place just hours before the candidates were to meet at the University of Miami for the first of three debates, The Associated Press learned. Kerry's team threatened to remove the lights when they visit the debate site with Kerry later in the day.

"We'll bring a screwdriver," said a Kerry aide familiar with what several people called an angry exchange. The commission did not return a call seeking comment.

Gee ... will they stamp their feet and hold their breath until they turn blue as well? The Kerry campaign agreed to the timer lights and the provisos that the lights be visible to both the live audience and television viewers. Where else but the lecterns provide that viewpoint? Did the Kerry campaign expect that the cameras would be pointing downwards at the candidates' feet?

Just when you think it's impossible for the Kerry show to get more juvenile, their aides threaten to unilaterally dismantle a podium because they didn't read the agreement they signed, or didn't think the prerequisites through very well. It doesn't build a great deal of confidence in the team that Kerry would bring to the White House, if elected.

Back To Targeting Children

Islamic terrorists in Iraq set off coordinated attacks today, killing dozens and wounding over 130 people. Children comprised the vast majority of the deaths, mostly from a three-bomb attack on a neighborhood celebration of a rebuilt sewage system:

Three bombs exploded at a neighborhood celebration Thursday in western Baghdad, killing 35 children and seven adults, officials said. Hours earlier, a suicide car bomb killed a U.S. soldier and two Iraqis on the capital's outskirts.

The bombs in Baghdad's al-Amel neighborhood caused the largest death toll of children in any insurgent attack since the conflict in Iraq began 17 months ago. The children, who were still on school vacation, said they had been drawn to the scene by American soldiers handing out candy.

The blasts — at least two of which an Iraqi official said were suicide car bombs — went off in swift succession about 1 p.m., killing 42 people and wounding 141 others, including 10 U.S. soldiers. The bombs targeted a ceremony in which residents were celebrating the opening of a new sewage system, and a U.S. convoy was passing by at the same time, said Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman.

So the fanatics one again decided to celebrate the Religion of Peace by slaughtering dozens of children, less than a month after another group of Islamists murdered hundreds of them in Beslan. So what sins did the civilians in al-Amel commit? Apparently, their happiness at having a working sewage system offends Islam. You'd have to talk to the Islamofascists to work out the theology behind that problem.

This is certain to fuel the naysayers here in America and around the world, who see every terrorist attack in Iraq as another reason to bug out. Explaining to them that we knew all along that the terrorists would step up their attacks in advance of our election and the upcoming January elections in Iraq makes no difference to them, nor does pointing out the historical parallels between Beirut in 1983, Mogadishu in 1993, and pullout talk now. Retreating in the face of terrorism never solves anything; it only emboldens the lunatics to escalate their attacks. Worse, it undermines our credibility, which has already caused them to believe this strategy will work.

When we passed the unfortunate milestone of 1,000 killed in Iraq (not all in combat conditions), many people claimed that such a number represented too high of a cost. Putting aside the "each life is precious" prefix that everyone uses (and which, if you read this blog regularly, you know you can take for granted), the question is not the casualties but the mission. Is the mission to stabilize Iraq and introduce some form of representative government worth our efforts? That's the pertinent question.

If you believe in the power of self-determination to bring freedom and peace to a region sorely lacking in all three elements, then our mission is highly worthy and must be seen through. If, on the other hand, you believe that all forms of government are equal and that democracy is not important to our national security, then our post-Saddam mission in Iraq is folly. It really is that simple. Otherwise, you wind up arguing that 995 deaths are A-OK but six more means failure, a cynical exercise that contradictorily devalues the lives it purports to save.

Just to give some perspective on numbers games:

Guadalcanal - 1600 dead
Iwo Jima - 6800 dead
Okinawa - 12,000 dead or missing

And yet we managed to conquer Japan and create a bastion of democracy and freedom that has been a lynchpin in the worldwide economy and security for decades. Imagine what kind of world we would have if our grandparents had quailed at necessary effort to accomplish that.

UPDATE: To answer the several e-mails I received detailing all the ways Iraq differs from the Pacific Theater of WWII, yes, I'm aware. That wasn't really my point, either, if you read my post again. My point is that counting casualties like watching an odometer turn over a new dial is no way to conduct a war or to set security policy. Had we operated our security policy under the presumption that 1,000 casualties represented a catastrophe, we would have settled with Hitler after the Kasserine Pass fiasco and with Hirohito after Guadalcanal.

Quick Links

Just trying to fit in a few last items that caught my eye today ...

Bill at INDC Journal interviews Richard Schlesinger of CBS News about the draft story. It's interesting and timely, and a great example of why Bill is one of the leading bloggers today ...

Hugh Hewitt has his new column up at the Weekly Standard. Make sure you read it before the debate, and check to see if the Great Pumpkin makes an appearance. (I'd say not: According to Linus in Peanuts, the Great Pumpkin only appears in the most sincere pumpkin patches, a description that hardly applies to John Flipflopflip Kerry.) ...

Saint Paul at Fraters Libertas continues to fact-check Nick Coleman's ass, as the phrase goes, and hits pay dirt ...

Patterico tries dry humor, and some people find it a bit too dry to realize he's joking -- but it sounds like a great idea anyway ...

Don't forget that I'll be live-blogging tonight's debate!

Crawford Newspaper Doesn't Like Criticism Of Its Editorial Policy

Yesterday's "big" news was that the local weekly in Crawford, TX -- Bush's home town -- endorsed John Kerry in a half-page editorial. This made national headlines around the country in places like the Boston Globe and Chicago Sun-Times; not bad for a paper with a circulation of 425! The implication was clear: even Bush's neighbors aren't supporting his re-election. Too bad most of them will miss this follow-up of local Crawford reaction to the Lone Star Iconoclast's endorsement:

But the rack that once held the Lone Star Iconoclast — Crawford's weekly newspaper — now is empty, thanks to a blistering indictment in Tuesday's paper of Bush's presidential record and a call to elect Democrat John Kerry in November.

For a town drenched in Bush, the editorial is practically political heresy.

"Not only is he the president of the United States, he's my neighbor, he's my customer," Coffee Station owner Nick Spanos said. "We're not carrying that paper after today." ...

Iconoclast publisher W. Leon Smith, who co-wrote the editorial with two other writers, is unapologetic. "We're just trying to point out the direction the country's going in, and it's not good," he said.

Smith is majority owner of the Iconoclast, the Record of nearby Clifton and the Bosque Globe. He's also the mayor of Clifton and a Democrat who was defeated twice in campaigns for the Texas House of Representatives.

I'm sure the locals know about Smith's political track record, but neither the Boston Globe nor the Chicago Sun-Times mentions it. It changes the story somewhat to know that the editor that wrote Kerry's endorsement has his own political career to consider with the Texas Democrats, and explains why he's willing to risk the ire of his readers and the financial standing of the paper. Six advertisers have already dropped the Iconoclast as well as a handful of subscribers, but at a circulation of 425, it won't take much to put it into the ground.

Smith has a problem with people expressing their opinions about his opinions, too, likening their criticism to living in a police state:

He pulled up his computer e-mail inbox, filled with messages of varying intensity.

Smith said about 75 percent of them applaud the editorial, but the remaining fourth border on vitriol.

"It really appears to be me that we no longer live in an open society," he said. "When you get to the point where you can't express an opinion, then you're in trouble."

It sounds like Smith is the one who has problems with people expressing opinions. "Border on vitriol" sounds like a pretty tepid response for him to whine about reader reaction. Liberals love to express themselves and criticize others but get awfully thin-skinned when other people practice their First Amendment rights. No wonder Smith lost two elections. (hat tip: DagneyT)

Did CBS Commit A Crime?

Attorney and Pace University law instructor Matt Hayes writes an opinion piece today for Fox asserting that Bill Burkett and CBS broke Texas and federal laws in their publication of the Killian fakes:

In Texas, the state in which Burkett concedes the false National Guard memos originated, it is a felony to make or present two or more documents with knowledge of their falsity and with intent that they be taken as a genuine governmental record. Under the U.S. Code, use of an interstate telephone wire, such as the one used to transmit an image of the forged documents from Texas to CBS headquarters, triggers federal jurisdiction. ...

CBS has cause for concern, too. The documents were not just forged; they were obviously forged to the generation over age 40, which has used both a typewriter and a computer to write; CBS did not have to be misled about the source of the documents to be tipped that the documents were not real. While Burkett might have been willfully blind to things that would indicate that the memos were fake, there is mounting evidence that even CBS' experts told producers of 60 Minutes II that they could not verify that the documents were real. The story was aired – or in the terms of the Texas forgery statute, "presented" — in spite of this.

Well, maybe, but I wouldn't be fitting Mary Mapes for a set of steel bracelets just yet. If Burkett can be proven as the forger -- his Kinko's account would be a good place to start -- then Hayes could be correct about the unstable Bush-hater. I think it's a big stretch to say that CBS has criminal culpability in this, unless Mapes knew for certain that the documents were fraudulent when she put them on the air. We can say that she should have known, and that her disregard for the input of her own experts constitutes at least reckless disregard and possibly malice aforethought, but those are issues for civil cases of libel and not the criminal charges Hayes mentions.

Whoever forged the documents should be prosecuted and put in prison as an example to anyone else who tries to pervert an election. CBS' penalty should be determined by the marketplace, and by all accounts, it already is. Keep letting your affiliates know what you think of Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, and Andrew Heyward. They'll know how to pass that message along. Don't let the conversation get distracted by injecting potential criminal charges into the mix.

Tina Brown Gets Impatient For "The Closer" To Show Up

Former magazine publisher Tina Brown writes in her Washington Post column today that Democrats have tired of hearing what a great closer John Kerry is, and wants the closing to start now rather than later:

With all the mythology about Kerry's gift of coming from behind, New Yorkers are watching and hoping like fundamentalists awaiting the rapture. "What will it be like?" they ask one another. A mysterious subtle transformation of will that suffuses Kerry with winner's luck? A defining moment when he soothes his wounded honor with a shaft of killing wit that at last unmasks Bush? If so, could it please happen in prime time tonight? (Maybe, just in case, Kerry should wear cowboy boots to reduce the president still further to the size of Dr. Ruth.)

Among the big-donor crowd, the good-closer cliche has worn out its welcome. They have had it with reading in the New York Times that the past two months of flubs were part of some weird subliminal strategy. Who does Kerry think he is? Bob Dylan? Enough already with the near-death experiences. Mr. Closer, give us closure.

I've thought about this reputation Kerry has garnered as some fourth-quarter genius who outlasts his opponents and scores a last-minute victory, but I'm not buying it, and it looks like Brown isn't either. He's won four terms in the Senate and a term as lieutenant governor in highly liberal Massachusetts as Ted Kennedy's protege. Really, how difficult is that to do? The wonder is that he had to come from behind at all, even against William Weld. He survived the primary not so much because he won it but because Howard Dean pulled a Dan Quayle against Al Sharpton in a debate, imploded shortly thereafter, and the Democrats wanted someone with proven electability. The only options left at that point were Dick Gephardt and John Edwards, neither of which could have guaranteed to cary their home states.

So far, I see no evidence that Kerry will be anything more as a candidate in the final month than he has been up to now -- an incompetent, outclassed vacillator who has squandered advantages in the polls and among the mainstream media to fall behind a vulnerable George Bush. Brown, however, see it differently. She claims that Kerry's come-from-behind act is doomed because of a conservative media bias:

Part of the weird mood of frustration and self-directed anger is that it's already clear that whatever brilliance Kerry pulls out of the hat, the post-debate spin from the Bush campaign and the cable news hunger for the political version of the Janet Jackson moment fuse perfectly with the likelihood of some emblematic sound bite or visual moment that purportedly buries Kerry.

Oh, sure, we all remember the dogpile at the White House earlier this year (and ever since) when the hounds were baying at Scott McClelland about George Bush's National Guard service as a demonstration of the media's conservative bias. Or how about that CBS story based on forgeries? That sure had a healthy dose of "White House spin". Meanwhile, Brown's associates still haven't asked Kerry about his false assertions with David Alston that stole Tedd Peck's service record, nor have they asked him about meeting with the Communists in Paris while still having a commission in the Navy.

Brown then gives a further demonstration of her cluelessness, in her hope for a Bush stumble:

On Bill O'Reilly's show Tuesday the president showed encouraging signs. At one point he suddenly addressed the host as "Factor." ("Did he call me Factor?" O'Reilly marveled to the camera with a quizzical smile.)

Perhaps if Brown had been awake the past four years, she would have known that Bush likes to pick out nicknames for people, a habit he's had since Yale. (Really, Tina -- it's been in all the papers, even yours.)

It's on slender reeds like this that Brown's hope grasps, desperately looking for a debate debacle from George Bush -- because she already knows that John Kerry can't deliver a home run. For that to happen, Kerry would have to be decisive and take a clear position on Iraq, something he's been unable to do over nine months now. If he could, his campaign wouldn't have to be promoting his purported abilities as a "closer".

Missouri Conceded?

How bad is it for John Kerry in those states that had been identified as "battleground"? So bad that even R. W. Apple notices that Kerry has made himself scarce in Missouri, a state previously considered ripe for plucking from Bush's 2000 victory list:

Is Missouri a swing state that has already swung? So it seems to many people here on the eve of the first presidential debate. John Kerry has not visited the state in nearly three weeks and may not be back, local Democrats say, until the second debate, scheduled for Oct. 8 at Washington University in St. Louis. This is no accident of scheduling. ...

Early on, the Kerry campaign poured advertising dollars into the state. From March 4 to June 20, St. Louis and Kansas City ranked among the nation's top 10 cities in terms of television spending by the two sides, according to the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which tracks such matters. During that period, the average Kansas City household saw presidential political commercials roughly 280 times.

But ever since the Kerry strategists decided to omit Missouri from their major advertising purchase after the Republican convention, the intensity of combat has diminished. Though the reasons for the change in strategy are not clear, politicians of both parties in Missouri took it to mean that Mr. Kerry's advisers thought it unlikely he could prevail here.

Right now, Kerry has his hands full trying to hang onto the states that Al Gore won last time out. States like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota show either a dead heat or a lead for Bush. Even though the DNC has poured money into Missouri to fill the gap, voters and politicians have noticed Kerry's absence.

John Kerry needs to show up in the Show Me State if he expects to compete.

UPDATE: Now that the storms have settled down, polling in Florida has started. Power Line notes that Gallup shows Bush up by nine in a non-corrected sample and Rassmussen shows Bush up by four in a corrected sample. Perhaps Kerry may start campaigning by proxy there as well ...

If They Can't Figure Out A Butterfly Ballot ...

San Franciso will try a new form of voting that reformers have touted for years as a replacement for traditional, majority-based elections that America has used almost exclusively up to now. The New York Times reports that Frisco residents will use instant-runoff voting for its County Board of Supervisors, allowing voters to rank their choices in order to eliminate the need for a second run-off election:

The cooperation is in response to a new election system, instant-runoff voting. The system, which voters approved in 2002 and is having its first run, is viewed by critics of winner-take-all elections as the start of a long-overdue overhaul of the way Americans choose elected officials.

Under this system, voters can choose three candidates for each office, ranking them in order of preference. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes, the lowest-placing finishers are eliminated, and the second and, if necessary, third choices on those ballots are counted until someone garners a majority.

The system removes the need for a separate runoff election, saving money and, if the recent past is a guide, increasing the number of voters who have a say in choosing the winner. Under the old system, turnout usually dropped significantly in runoffs.

How does this work? Let's take a hypothetical look at how this could work in this year's presidential election in a generic state. The ballot could contain four names: George Bush, John Kerry, Ralph Nader, and Michael Bednarik (Libertarian). If none of these candidates get one vote over 50%, then only the top two survive and the eliminated ballots are retallied for their second choices -- the so-called "instant runoff", although the recount isn't likely to be instant.

Let's say the initial results look like this:

Bush - 48%
Kerry - 46%
Nader - 5%
Bednarik - 1%

After congratulating Bednarik for even showing up on this list, we have to eliminate both Bednarik and Nader and tally their voters' second choices. If 80% of Nader's voters select Kerry as their second choice and half of Bednarik's voters choose Bush as the runner-up, then the vote totals end up thus:

Kerry - 50.5%
Bush - 49.5%

So despite George Bush having a two-point advantage among first-choice voters, he winds up losing the state based on second-choice polling. Can you imagine the different stages at which recounts and lawsuits appear in this system? It would only be used when vote results are so close that no clear majority arises. Then you have a recount of only those voters whose candidates are eliminated. In some systems, everyone above a certain percentage level survives the first round, and so the voters may have to go through three rounds instead of two.

In 2000, people got their panties in a twist over butterfly ballots and the supposedly insurmountable obstacle they represented to Florida voters, even though almost every election in which I voted in California used the same kind of ballot. If the great unwashed can't figure out that a punch-card ballot has to be punched through to count, how are they supposed to understand that they have to vote for three candidates in a ranked order for each office? It's only a matter of time before we hear about confused voters claiming that they were "disenfranchised" because they forgot to mark in a third choice, or marked four people instead of three, or more new complaints about their own incompetence.

And that is what people call reform?

He Died Of Exhaustion

MIT has determined that all six billion people descended from a single ancestor who lived just 3500 years ago, according to the London Telegraph:

Everyone in the world is descended from a single person who lived around 3,500 years ago, according to a new study. Scientists have worked out the most recent common ancestor of all six billion people alive today probably dwelt in eastern Asia around 1,415BC. ...

Using a computer model, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology attempted to trace back the most recent common ancestor using estimated patterns of migration throughout history.

They calculated that the ancestor's location in eastern Asia allowed his or her descendants to spread to Europe, Asia, remote Pacific Islands and the Americas. Going back a few thousand years more, the researchers found a time when a large fraction of people in the world were the common ancestors of everybody alive today - while the rest were ancestors of no one alive. That date was 5,353BC, the team reports in Nature.

I find this very intriguing. If MIT's research holds up, it could explain much of the Genesis books in the Old Testament, which come down to two men at different times: Adam and Abraham. In both cases, the Scriptures tell us that we all descend from both. I'm not a Biblical scholar, and I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, but the two dates could have some Biblical connotations as well. Could the memory of our earliest common ancestor have been passed down for 7,000 years as Adam, and could our latest common ancestor be the Abraham of the Bible? The location and the timeframe are both within reason.

Scientifically, our genetic diversity seems pretty remarkable for a single ancestor less than 4000 years in the past -- about 200 generations, give or take. We've branched out in almost an unlimited way in a short time frame, evolutionarily speaking, so much so that it shakes belief. If MIT can back this up, it may change the way we look at the history of human development.

Typekey Update, Among Other Things

A number of you have written to me to let me know about a problem with the Typekey registration. I sent a message to Six Apart describing the problem - I had it too - and they sent me a reply within a couple of hours:

Hi Edward,

Several other sites have reported similar problems and our echnicians are taking a look at what's going on. I've forwarded your information to the technicians and asked them to look at your site too.

Thanks for getting in contact.

Laura
Six Apart, Ltd

It looks like the problem is on their end, and hopefully they'll get it resolved soon. Keep trying!

Both Whiskey and I seem to have the same bug, even though we're thousands of miles apart. Clever timing, eh? She tells me she'll be back to blogging when she feels better. I managed to go into the office for half a day today. We'll see how tomorrow goes ...

Speaking of tomorrow, I'm planning on live-blogging the debate with my Northern Alliance friends at the Our House ... er ... house. If I've shaken it off, we'll be group live-blogging from David and Margaret's home using their wireless connection to the Internet. If I'm still sick, I'll be blogging it from bed ...

Read Fraters Libertas and Shot In The Dark for Nick Coleman updates. In fact, Mitch has issued a challenge to Coleman. Think he'll accept? Or will he take the Boyd option?

Italy Sold Out -- UPDATE: Maybe?

I have tremendous respect for the Italy's solidarity with the US on the war on terror and the Iraqi front; they have bled and died with us, despite whatever John Kerry says about their character. That's why the news that they paid a million-dollar ransom to Islamofascists for the release of two hostages disappoints so bitterly:

A senior Italian politician says he believes a ransom of $1m or more was paid for the release of two female Italian aid workers kidnapped in Iraq. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said no money had been paid but MP Gustavo Selva described the denial as purely "official". ...

Gustavo Selva is head of the Italian parliament's foreign affairs committee and a member of the National Alliance, one of the parties in the governing coalition.

"The young women's life was the most important thing," he told French radio on Wednesday.

"In principle, one should not give in to blackmail, but this time I think we had to give in..."

No doubt the Italians faced a difficult choice, especially since the terrorists in their, ahem, bravery had kidnapped two young Italian women and were threatening to behead them. Unfortunately, all they did was reward the kidnapers and encourage them to do the same again -- and they will likely target the Italians more frequently now that they have shown an inclination to bargain. One million dollars buys a lot of ammunition and guns. It buys even more street credibility.

These people hack the heads off of civilian workers whose only crime is that they wanted to help the Iraqi people back onto their feet. They are animals, and the only way to save lives in the long run is to quit treating them like legitimate negotiating partners. Giving them millions of dollars only encourages more lunatics to take up kidnaping and beheading as a get-rich-quick scheme.

UPDATE: Agence France-Presse reports that Italy paid no ransom:

Italy insisted it did not pay a million-dollar ransom to win the release of two aid workers, as the country rejoiced in the homecoming of the women who said they were ready to return to Iraq to continue their work there.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini insisted "absolutely no ransom" had been paid for the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, known affectionately by Italians as "the two Simonas".

A proud Frattini said Italy had simply used its "wide system of contacts" in the Arab world, adding that this "made the kidnappers understand concretely what they were dealing with: a country, Italy, loved and esteemed by the Arab world".

"That was our only ransom," he said in an interview with RAI state radio.

Well, that's their story, and I predict they'll be sticking with it. If Italy had that kind of love and esteem from the Arab world, why did the terrorists kidnap and hold Italian hostages for this long?

The Kerry/Edwards Draft, or Dodging History

The Democrats have had a fine time this month spreading urban legends about the prospect of a reintroduction of the military draft during a second Bush term. Not only have they and their associates started a shadowy e-mail campaign, but several of their party leaders accused Republicans of hiding a "secret plan" to restart the draft, despite the numerous denials from the GOP -- and the fact that the only people to actually propose a new draft are two Democrats, Charles Rangel and Fritz Hollings. CBS helped out, again, by again treating rumors as fact and basing an entire news segment on the hoax.

But lost in the shuffle until now is John Kerry's proposal to require service for high-school graduation, found by Swimming Through The Spin. Brian found the original web page archived, as somehow this proposal has been mysteriously deleted from the John Kerry website. Since the Democrats brought this up, what exactly are the plans for American youth under a Kerry/Edwards administration?

As part of his 100 day plan to change America, John Kerry will propose a comprehensive service plan that includes requiring mandatory service for high school students and four years of college tuition in exchange for two years of national service.

The more expansive PDF of Kerry's plan doesn't detail how the mandatory high-school service is supposed to work, nor does it clearly explain how they plan to pay for four years of college tuition for the 500,000 students per year they expect to put through this program, other than closing a loophole that allows lenders on student loans to keep extra interest paid. If a "typical public university" charges $5,000 per year for tuition -- a rather moderate amount these days -- then just the cost for the first year alone will be $10 billion, not the $12 billion over 10 years that Kerry claims. ($20,000 times 500,000 students = $10 billion.)

It seems that Kerry has once again been caught in a severe case of projection, and once again has deleted pages from his web site to cover his tracks. His party squeals about a draft which only they have proposed restarting while trying to back-door a plan for indentured servitude for the teenagers of America.

South Dakota Isn't Kerry's Fault

The AP features an analysis of John Kerry's down-ticket effect, but the main case presented has little to do with Kerry and his candidacy:

Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle hugged President Bush from one end of South Dakota to the other this summer. In his own campaign commercials.

The brief embrace might seem an odd claim on re-election for the man Republicans depict as obstructionist-in-chief for the president's congressional agenda. But Daschle is one of several candidates with a common political problem as Democrats nurse fragile hopes of gaining Senate control this fall.

From the South to South Dakota and Alaska, they are running in areas where Bush is popular — and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry not so much.

Democrats in the South and West have a big problem with Kerry at the top of the ticket. Right now he's barely able to hold his base, commonly considered 40% and coincidentally the same level of support he received in the latest Pew poll. But the problems that Tom Daschle faces in South Dakota are entirely self-inflicted, although Kerry's association surely doesn't help in a state that Bush won by 22 points in 2000.

As minority leader of the Senate, Daschle has led an unprecedented attack on the traditions of the Senate and the appointment of judges. No federal judicial nominee save Abe Fortas had ever been filibustered before Bush's term, and the Fortas filibuster was bipartisan. Once a candidate came out of the Judiciary Committee, the Senate always gave the nominee an up-or-down vote -- something Daschle has denied almost a dozen Bush nominees now. It's obstructionism at its worst, an escalation of a process that had already been too partisan by half.

Now that Daschle's running for re-election, it behooves him to suck up to Bush in his ad campaigns, but the majority of South Dakotans won't be fooled. Daschle has strayed from his centrist-right constituency and literally embraced the leftist lunacy of Michael Moore more than he ever embraced George Bush. That may play well among the limousine liberal set in Hollywood and the Northeast, but his home state has been highly unimpressed with the company Daschle really keeps.

Lasers As Terror Weapons?

Michelle Malkin points her readers to this odd Washington Times story about a pilot whose retina was burned by in-flight exposure to a laser:

A pilot flying a Delta Air Lines jet was injured by a laser that illuminated the cockpit of the aircraft as it approached Salt Lake City International Airport last week, U.S. officials said.

The plane's two pilots reported that the Boeing 737 had been five miles from the airport when they saw a laser beam inside the cockpit, said officials familiar with government reports of the Sept. 22 incident. The flight, which originated in Dallas, landed without further incident at about 9:30 p.m. local time.

The pilot will apparently return to flight status in a week or so as the damage was not permanent, and with three flight officers on the plane, it would not have disabled the aircraft anyway. However, a spokesman for the pilot's union says that this is not the first incident of its kind:

"The Air Line Pilots Association has received reports in the past of incidents where lasers penetrated cockpits and, in at least one case, caused injury," Mr. Mazor said.

Several years ago, a pilot flying into a Western airport was hit by a light from a laser light show. The causes of the other incidents are not known, he said.

Asked whether a laser aimed at pilots could cause a plane to crash, Mr. Mazor said: "I think that's highly improbable. In every case in the past, the flights landed safely."

It seems unlikely to me as well. If you wanted to aim something at a plane to make it crash, a shoulder-fired SAM would be much more reliable. Navy Commander Jack Daly got permanently injured by laser exposure while flying a mission and warned Congress that terrorists could use this method to bring down planes without leaving any evidence. But terrorists usually want to leave evidence of their work; the whole point is to terrify people, after all. Terrorists not only desire recognition, they need it as part of whatever cause they're hoping to support with murder and terror.

It's more likely that the people playing with lasers aren't terrorists but malicious individuals trying to do damage in any way they can, or simply clueless nutcases who think it's funny. But either way, it holds little comfort to the men and women in the cockpit.

Nick Coleman, Off His Meds

A number of high-profile members of the Fourth Estate have gotten mighty testy about the blogosphere lately, writing poisoned-pen columns about how we have the audacity to write criticisms of professional journalists who write criticisms of everyone else. It was just a matter of time before the third-rate hacks took up the same mission, and as Nick Coleman shows us in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, that time is now.

Nick starts off his factless tirade by sniffing about an odd characterization of Democrats:

This just in: I am a very wealthy man, born into privilege and power, and a stooge of the Democratic Party.

Oh. That reminds me, Smithers: Bring me the heads of some Republicans, would you? Also, set out the good silver. Fritz is coming over to give me my marching orders.

Dad-ums would be so proud, wouldn't he, Muffy?

Nothing in the opening paragraph is true, but bloggers and talk-show barracudas have said so, tossing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. I happen to enjoy the idea of me as to the manor born, so I have taken to wearing an ascot to my corner pizza parlor. ...

My dad was a Democrat (the first one to lead the Minnesota Senate since statehood). But he was a part-time politician and a mainstream Minnesotan who hated extremists of all kinds and enjoyed the company of many good Republicans, especially thirsty ones.

He'd be amazed that my $10,000 share of his Navy insurance policy -- the sum total of what he left to each of his six children, in addition to various knickknacks -- makes me a rich boy. Or to learn that he raised me in a mansion (actually, a split-level rambler) or sent me to tony schools (I believe St. James Grade School charged $30 tuition. A year).

Well, I think what Nick is getting at is the fact that the average Democratic contribution for president is slightly larger than that for the Republicans, who have raised more money through small contributions. Or it could be the knock on the Kerry tax plan that considers the top of the middle class at $70,000 per year. Actually, it's impossible to understand what the hell Coleman's talking about here, because he never explains it -- he just throws this out as if it's a common argument among bloggers, when I've never really heard it at all.

Sorry that you grew up in a middle-class household, pal. So did I. But if you are that sensitive to criticism about your upbringing, then you've just gotten a mere taste of what Republicans hear all day long.

And then Coleman breaks into a non-defense defense of Dan Rather:

But this is not about me. It is about the war against the media. A lot of it, we deserve. But a lot of the attack against the mainstream media is coming from bloggers, which is like astronomers being assaulted by people who swear that aliens force them to have sex with Martians.

Why don't you admit we are being invaded by Venusians?

I say: If you think Dan Rather is kooky, read some blogs and you, too, will be found in a daze, muttering, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" But put on haz-mat gloves before you touch the mouse. ...

Do bloggers have the credentials of real journalists? No. Bloggers are hobby hacks, the Internet version of the sad loners who used to listen to police radios in their bachelor apartments and think they were involved in the world.

Bloggers don't know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their every thought with the moon. Like graffiti artists, they tag the public square -- without editors, correction policies or community standards. And so their tripe is often as vicious as it is vacuous.

Funny, that's the way we've always viewed your column, Nick. This edition provides a great example -- plenty of invective and insults and almost no facts whatsoever.

Here are a couple of facts, Nick. CBS News and Dan Rather -- who is their managing editor, a position you claim gives "professional" journalists an advantage over bloggers -- ran a story smearing the President during an election, using forgeries so bad that anyone who spent two minutes in the military could have recognized it. The checks and balances you point to with pride all managed to turn off their hearing aids when their own experts told them the documents were faked. And after they were caught -- by who, Nick? You? -- they spent eleven days emulating the Nixon White House, stonewalling and having Dan Rather tell us he "personally vouched" for the documents' authenticity.

Another fact: They still haven't admitted the documents are fakes, only that they cannot authenticate them.

And we're supposed to trust the mainstream media because ...?

I have been a reporter longer than most bloggers have been alive, which makes me, at 54, ready for the ash heap. But here's what really makes bloggers mad: I know stuff.

I covered Minneapolis City Hall, back when Republicans controlled the City Council. I have reported from almost every county in the state, I have covered murders, floods, tornadoes, World Series and six governors.

In other words, I didn't just blog this stuff up at midnight.

This, ladies and gentlemen, represents all of the facts that Nick Coleman presents in today's column, and it don't mean squat. Rather's been reporting almost as long as you've been alive, Nick, and he lied to us. It isn't about incompetence, although in your case it's a part of it. It's about bias and prejudice, and in CBS News' case, it's about malicious intent. CBS News allowed its producer, Mary Mapes, to sate her five-year personal obsession about skewering George Bush on his National Guard service by knowingly putting evidence on air that was faked.

Their viewers aren't fooled, Nick. They're abandoning the Tiffany Network's news programs in droves. CBS News made it up, at midnight or some other time, and it was the "hobby hacks" you decry that uncovered it.

Nick takes a swipe at the Power Line guys as well, specifically Scott Johnson:

Last week, one fashionable Minnesota blogger -- a bank vice president who is getting a lot of ink and TV time lately -- posted a scurrilous piece about U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, calling him, "Minnesota's contribution to the psychiatric profession."

Whoa. Maybe bank vice presidents never need counseling. But they sure must need more to do. This suddenly renowned bank vice president posted his ishy Dayton item at 10:30 a.m. on a weekday, making me wonder exactly what it is a bank vice president does. ...

We are not dealing with journalism, people. We are dealing with Internet chat rooms: sleazy and unreliable, with no accountability. Most bloggers are not fit to carry a reporter's notebook.

I'm curious, Nick: exactly what kind of accountability do you have? What kind of accountability does the Strib have? Is there some magic about putting words into newsprint that automatically assigns truth to your words? Because from where I sit, having read your column for several years and laughing at all the wrong parts, I'd say that you're not fit to carry Scott's pen. Scott and John helped unmask an electoral fraud at a major news organization while you write paeans to editors, for Pete's sake.

Besides, in the interest of full disclosure, one of your senior editors just came out on the losing end of a public war of words about Power Line's coverage of the Swiftvets campaign, which your paper never bothered to cover in its news sections but decided to trash in another content-free editorial instead. After writing a pair of dueling columns each, we invited Jim Boyd to appear on our radio show to debate the subject, mano a mano with Scott, and Boyd chickened out. I know; I was there.

We have accountability, Nick, to our readers. We write opinion pieces, which means that we at least reveal our biases, unlike most of your brethren, who resort to the ludicrous "Some of my best friends are Republican" defense. We link back to our sources for our readers to check out themselves, and the blogosphere and the readers hold us accountable. If you read blogs about Venusian invasions and Martian body-snatching, that's your problem, not the blogosphere.

And by the way, did you check the links on those Martian/Venusian posts? Perhaps they led back to the print world after all. (via Wog's Blog)

A Grant Of Nobility

Jim Geraghty of the essential Kerry Spot notes tonight that the Washington Times has recognized a number of bloggers in its Saturday edition as "nobles" in their Nobles and Knaves running featurette:

A few honorary mentions are in order: Jim Geraghty of Kerry Spot (nationalreview.com); Ed Morrissey of Captainsquartersblog.com; Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com; the writers of Powerlineblog.com and Littlegreenfootballs.com; the writers and editors of Realclearpolitics.com; and the ever-vigilant freerepublic.com.

For their dogged pursuit of the truth in line with the honored tradition of American journalism, the bloggers are the Nobles of the week.

CQ sends its thanks to the editors of the Washington Times, and congratulations to the other bloggers honored along with us.

Pew: Kerry Falling Away, Bush Up Eight

The new Pew Research poll shows that George Bush is maintaining his strong lead over John Kerry, as the Democrat can barely muster the baseline 40% that his party affiliation should provide:

President Bush's lead over Democratic nominee John Kerry increased to eight points in a Pew Research Center poll released on Tuesday, compared to a slight three-point lead in a poll conducted last week.

The telephone survey of registered voters showed 48 percent would vote for Bush and 40 percent for Kerry. A similar poll conducted from Sept. 17 to Sept. 21 showed Bush with 45 percent and Kerry with 42 percent.

Kerry continues to fall behind while Bush gains, extending his lead over Kerry by five points over the past week. The internal data of the Pew poll shows more softness in Bush's support than other pollsters have found, but the news could hardly be worse for Kerry:

The poll finds that Bush's gains in support are being driven more by perceptions of Kerry's weakness especially on leadership and other personal traits than by improved opinions of Bush. Fewer voters favor Bush over Kerry on handling Iraq than did so earlier this month (46% now, 52% Sept. 11-13). But Kerry's rating in the head-to-head evaluation on Iraq is no higher (38% now, 40% then). The Democratic challenger continues to inspire more confidence than Bush with regard to improving the economy, which 60% of Americans believe is in only fair or poor shape. But even here, the percentage favoring Kerry has not increased since the Sept. 11-13 survey (46% now, 47% then).

Despite Bush's lukewarm evaluations on the issues, he maintains a significant advantage on most personal traits. Kerry has slipped slightly on some key personal assessments, including honesty and empathy. Overall, 32% of voters say the phrase "honest and truthful" better describes Kerry than Bush, down from 36% a few weeks ago (Sept. 11-13). Bush's rating in that period is unchanged at 41%.

Pew also reports that Bush continues to gain among women (45-42), and significantly, shows strength among younger voters as well. Bush has gone from eighteen points down to six points in front (48-42) among the 18-29 demographic, one of the key support groups for Democrats. Bush also holds a ten-point edge among Catholics (49-39), another traditional voting bloc for Democrats. Bush leads in all educational strata, all economic demographics about $30k/year, and has a whopping 13-point advantage in battleground states (50-37).

The polling took place between 9/22 and 9/26, all of which came after Kerry supposedly launched his new Iraq policy (version 9.0). It looks like rather than reversing his slide, it may have accelerated it. Pew has a graph on their site which shows much more daylight between the two candidates than existed since the convention, and in fact may have reversed a mild recovery by the Democrats.

Democrats have labored under the delusion that Bush was riding a temporary bounce from the convention, but the truth is that Kerry has surfed downward ever since his. The electorate has finally gotten a good look at Kerry and have found him wanting.

Air America: Another 527?

Al Franken is taking his show on the road throughout battleground states in the upcoming election. The AP reports that Franken will be doing live remotes throughout the Midwest in the same time frame as the presidential debates:

Al Franken is taking his radio show on the campaign trail. "The Al Franken Show" will broadcast live across the country starting Thursday and ending Oct. 9, making stops in eight cities including swing state battlegrounds Minneapolis; Columbus, Ohio; and Miami.

"It serves a lot of purposes," Franken told The Associated Press Tuesday. "The main one is to drive me into the ground before the elections."

Of course, the way that Air America is going, it may be the farewell tour more than a campaign support tour. It seems somewhat odd that (a) Franken's tour coincides with the debates, (b) his destinations mostly occur in battleground states, and (c) the AP sees fit to publicize it for Franken. Radio talk-show hosts do live remotes and tours all the time. Hugh Hewitt, of course, goes on the road on a regular basis but I've never seen the AP report it.

It confirms what we thought about Air America all along -- it exists only to get around the new campaign-finance restrictions. Its purpose is to allow George Soros and others an unregulated route with which to campaign on John Kerry's behalf, or more accurately, against George Bush.

Kerry Tries To Milk Dairy Farmers

Seldom has a presidential campaign seen such bald-faced pandering as John Kerry demonstrated yesterday in Spring Green, Wisconsin. With a polling deficit nearing double digits in a state Al Gore carried last election, Kerry tried stemming the bleeding by sucking up to Wisconsin's dairy farmers. Long a supporter of the Northeastern Dairy Compact that put the screws to Midwestern producers, Kerry told the Spring Green farmers that he now has seen the light:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told voters in America's Dairyland on Monday that President Bush had a secret plan that would hurt milk producers after the election. ...

In the 1990s, Kerry supported the Northeast Dairy Compact, a regional pricing program that propped up prices for Northeastern dairy farmers over objections from their Midwestern counterparts.

"We've had a difference between the Midwest and the Northeast," Kerry said. "I'm going to be very upfront with you about it.

"As a senator representing Massachusetts, I fought for the dairy compact and fought to have our dairy farmers get help," the four-term lawmaker said. "I'm running for president of the United States now and I intend to represent all the farmers of America."

Oh, so now that his Senate record generates opposition throughout the Midwestern region, he suddenly repudiates it, and not for any high-minded ideals. He admits that he supported the NDC and New England dairy farmers for purely political profit ... but now that he needs more support, he's glad to give his former supporters the shaft in order to win Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.

How much more cynical can one get?

Well, perhaps it's instructive to recall a little more history of the Northeastern Dairy Compact. Jim Jeffords, formerly a Republican Senator from Vermont, changed his party affiliation shortly after George Bush was elected in order to throw control of the Senate to the Democrats for the remainder of their session. One of Jeffords' pet projects was the NDC, whose protectionism benefitted Vermont dairymen at the expense of their counterparts in the Midwest and elsewhere. Up to that time, some Democrats had pressed for an end to what had been sold as a temporary measure for short-term relief.

The NDC, or NEIDC as it sometimes is called, had bipartisan support from New England senators such as Jeffords, Leahy, and Kerry, as well as Republican support in order to keep Jeffords from bolting to the Democrats. As mentioned, Midwestern Democrats attempted to kill the program in order to assist their own constituencies. As soon as Jeffords went independent, Democrats such as Kerry tried to keep the program afloat, but the program expired without the broader support Jeffords could extort from the GOP.

Even though supporting the NDC was actually one of Kerry's more consistent policy stands, he now repudiates it as he claims to be representing all of the US now as a presidential candidate. But if the NDC was so bad for the country, perhaps Kerry could explain why he continously supported it as a member of the US Senate.

Feed A Cold, Starve A Blogger

I seem to be one of the fortunate souls that catch the flu at the beginning of the season. I spent the past two days in bed, only to wake up today feeling even sicker than before. After an abortive attempt to get into the office this morning, I'm back in bed again with daytime television. (Have you watched this stuff lately? It's egregious; I just watched an operatic diaper commercial. I'm not kidding.)

You would think that the time would allow for more and better blogging, but the opposite is true. It's hard to concentrate on reading through the news properly in order to form coherent opinions about it. (As much as I'm ever coherent, anyway.) Yesterday I wound up watching pieces of X-Men 2 three different times, thanks to HBO's lack of imagination in its programming and a couple of naps I took. Actually, X2 was better than I thought it would be. Maybe I should write movie reviews instead.

Anyway, since I can barely talk and feel like mostly sleeping all day long, I'll probably post on and off today. Coherence is not guaranteed...

Ooops -- Our Bad

After seventeen years of on-and-off intifadah, the Palestinians have slowly come to the realization that bombing civilians in pizzarias may not be the most effective way to generate sympathy for their cause:

When Abu Fahdi joined a Palestinian militant group and took up arms against Israel, he thought he was serving his people. Now he believes he did them only harm.

"We achieved nothing in all this time, and we lost so much," said the baby-faced 29-year-old, who, because of his status as a fugitive, insisted on being identified by a nickname meaning "father of Fahdi." "People hate us for that and wish we were dead."

Well, boo hoo, but when people shoot indiscriminately at civilian vehicles as Abu Fahdi confesses and blow up civilians on buses and in shops, they don't attract love from anyone except the Che Guevara fans of mass murder (of which there are far too many, admittedly). And if we had to choose between Abu Fahdi and his ilk of bombthrowers or the free civilians in Israel who don't spend their time supporting serial killers, the rational among us would prefer that the Fahdis were no longer around to trouble us.

The Los Angeles Times reports that many Palestinians now question their leadership and whether the intifadah was a big mistake. Two thirds polled in the West Bank and Gaza Strip now support a cease-fire instead of continued "military" action, reversing an earlier result. Note, however, that they don't favor suspending the civilian bombing and strafing because it's wrong -- just that it's been ineffective and made them look bad:

Although dogged resistance to the Israeli occupation helped keep the Palestinian hope for statehood in the world spotlight, many now believe that the visible public support for suicide bombings was a crucial error.

"In a post-9/11 world, that could only harm our cause," said Manasra, the Bethlehem governor.

At least it may be a start, although the Palestinians unleashed some forces that it may find impossible to withdraw. Syria and Iran fund Hamas and Islamic Jihad not out of overwhelming concern for the plight of the Palestinians but out of hatred for the Jews and the state of Israel. Also, even if the Palestinians reject the terrorism that have defined their entire strategy for decades, they have yet to reject the leader that designed, implemented, and maintained that strategy -- the disastrous Yasser Arafat. Between Arafat and the power of Syria and Iran, any effort to rid the territories of terrorists are doomed, and they know it.

The Palestinians sold their souls long ago to these demons. If they are to be rid of them, they will need to rise up and push them out of their midst -- and the effort will cost them dearly. When they undertake that mission, then we will know they are serious. Until then, the Abu Fahdis can wail all they want about how the world hates them, wringing their bloodstained hands for the press, but we will spare our sympathy for the women and children they have butchered.

The New Old Hometown

Julian Sanchez laments the loss of freedom in his hometown of New York City and the transformation of Manhattan into, in Sanchez' words, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Disney corporation. Sanchez writes a strong defense of the libertarian philosophy and why he thinks New York needs a little more of it applied to its current government:

With the approval of [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg — who is quoted in the Times story as telling participants in a community meeting, "I wouldn't want a porn shop in my neighborhood and you shouldn't have one in yours" — building inspectors have singled out adult businesses for special attention, issuing a barrage of citations for such picayune violations as improper lighting on exit signs, cigarette butts on shop floors, or insufficient soap in bathrooms. The city's inexhaustible cache of micromanagerial regulations all but insures that each business can be found guilty of something, and it's hard not to recall the scene in which one of Ayn Rand's pulp villains declares:

Did you really think we want those laws observed? [...] There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

The effort is not entirely dissimilar from efforts by neighborhood associations in my current stomping grounds, Washington D.C., to use a byzantine liquor licensing system as leverage to bully bar and nightclub owners into accepting "voluntary" agreements that limit the businesses in a host of ways not connected in any direct and obvious way with the serving of liquor.

Sanchez' argument makes sense, although I think that Rudy Giuliani's original effort to enforce the smaller laws as a barrier to larger violations not only made sense, but actually worked to improve New York's safety. The question is how many of the smaller laws does a city pass? Enforcement only comes after legislation is enacted; complaining about the police enforcing laws is somewhat akin to complaining about getting charged at the supermarket counter. The place for New Yorkers to slow down Bloomberg's enforcement efforts is at the legislature and city council -- to remove the sillier regulations with which businesses must comply.

Nor does Sanchez completely convince me that the sex industry is victimized by zoning laws. Sanchez attempts to paint ordinances that restrict sex shops from being within 500 feet of a church as a violation of the separation between church and state. That would only be true if it applied to one particular church. As long as it applies to all places of worship equally, it's not only constitutional, it expresses the will of the people in most communities.

Sanchez asks:

But those secondary effects are often hard to disentangle from negative attitudes toward the content of the material peddled there. Consider, for instance, the "secondary effect" of diminished property values. That certainly seems like—indeed, is—a perfectly concrete harm. Yet what does it mean, ultimately, for property values to be reduced? Only that some significant portion of real estate buyers prefer not to live near adult businesses, a preference which may largely amount to no more than a subjective disapproval of dildoes and porn DVDs.

Er, no. Sanchez loses me here. Sex businesses do not exist antiseptically from the neighborhood, and I have lived and worked around enough of them to know. Where strip clubs and porn theaters operate, you will find alcohol bottles, syringes, and used condoms strewn about. Even the upper-class "gentlemen's clubs" wind up with the girls doing tricks in the parking lots, or the B-list of street dancers taking up the slack.

It's revolting even in a business district. It's absolutely intolerable around schools and (yes) churches, where children go for religious or educational instruction. Perhaps Toys in Babeland maintains an upper-class clientele, but so did the strip club that moved in next to our offices in Phoenix; their parking lot was filled with expensive cars, parked by valets and driven by men in nice suits. And yet the next morning their parking lot and ours would be filled with the detritus of alcohol, narcotic, and sexual activity.

As someone with libertarian sympathies, Sanchez' arguments about the limitation of government and the reduction of police enforcement resonate with me -- to a point. However, his defense of the sex industry as a harmless adult Disneyland thwarted by the closed-mindedness of puritanical New Yorkers doesn't fly.

Kerry to Bush: "Stop it!"

According to the AFP, candidate Kerry is sick and tired of campaign ads, or at least those directed at him:

Kerry said the avalanche of negative television spots and attacks being shown on US screens was scaring off voters.

"Americans need a real conversation over our future," Kerry said in a speech at a school in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

"What they don't need is all these trumped up advertisements, they just make people curl up and walk away," added the Massachusetts senator.

"I'm calling them 'misleadisments,'" Kerry said of the adverts. "It's all scare tactics ... because (Bush) has no record to run on."

Whatever happened to "bring it on?"

After crying for the Republicans to quit being mean, Kerry explained how his numerous positions on Iraq are not inconsistent:

"I've been right on Iraq all along," said Kerry. "I said yes, we ought to hold him (Saddam Hussein) accountable, but let's do it the right way, and I showed what it was, step by step. And step-by-step the president chose the wrong way."

That ought to clear things up.

CNN not convinced by its own poll results

The latest CNN/Gallup poll shows President Bush leading among likely voters John Kerry at 52% to 44%, well beyond the 4% margin of error. Even better, 53% of registered voters prefer the president while only 42% intend to vote for Kerry.

CNN plays hide the poll results and sneaks this gem into the middle of the article:

The poll also showed Bush's job approval rating at 54 percent -- the highest since January -- and it found increased public approval for the president's handling of the economy, terrorism, the situation in Iraq and foreign affairs.

Despite this evidence, CNN is just not convinced that more Americans support President Bush and titles its article: "Bush apparently leads Kerry in pre-debate poll." Apparently? If CNN can't trust its own poll results, whose can it trust? And for that matter, who can trust CNN?

Dana Milbank Needs A Life

... and apparetly, so do several White House correspondents, if what Milbank writes is true. Milbank, seldom known to pass up a chance at a cheap shot at the administration, takes an especially petty one this morning not at Bush but at Ayad Allawi, claiming that White House correspondents now spend their time searching for the Iraqi PM's speechwriter:

It's a political whodunit: Since Ayad Allawi delivered his address to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, foreign policy devotees have been searching for the ghostwriter of the speech, which sounded curiously familiar to American ears.

The White House denies that anybody in the administration did it. Several of the usual suspects outside the administration, including former White House officials Karen Hughes, Dan Senor and David Frum, have also denied culpability.

Oooh -- they "denied culpability"? It's a cover-up!!

Milbank then goes through an interminable series of quotations from both Allawi's speech and Bush addresses on the White House web site, almost none of which sound very similar except for the facts given in each -- which I guess Milbank would have been happier to see not match up. (In fact, I'm sure of that.) The only pair that sounds alike is the assertion from both that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. Otherwise, the rest of the article is filled with a series of mismatched pairs, like these:

"There are terrorists . . . who seek to make our country the main battleground against freedom, democracy and civilization." -- Allawi

"The killers know that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." -- Bush ...

"I have many friends who were murdered, tortured or raped by the regime of Saddam Hussein. . . . We estimate at least 300,000 in mass graves." -- Allawi

"Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq." -- Bush

If this is the best reporting that Milbank can do, it's time for the Washington Post to assign the "White House Notebook" to a gossip columnist -- well, an admitted gossip columnist -- or put a real reporter in the White House press corps.

Vote for Kerry, he's tall!

Gearing up for Thursday's debate, Senator Kerry tries out several themes, some old and some new, for the Wisconsin voters. According to the AP:

Speaking at a town hall style meeting here, not far from the hideaway resort where he is preparing for the debate, Kerry ridiculed Bush for saying in a television interview that he had no regrets over his "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard an aircraft carrier — and would do it again.

"Since he said that, over 900 have given their lives for the country. The mission was not accomplished when he said it," Kerry said.

"He didn't know it and didn't understand it. It's not accomplished today. And he's still trying to hide from the American people what needs to be done in order to be successful in Iraq," Kerry added. Bush didn't actually say "mission accomplished" at the time, but spoke beneath a huge banner on the carrier bearing those words.

The only surprise here is that the AP takes it upon itself points out that President Bush didn't use the words "mission accomplished in his speech." You know things are looking bad for the Dems when the AP misses a chance to smear the president.

Next theme:

Kerry also conceded that, as a Massachusetts senator, he had voted for a federal program that propped up prices for Northeastern dairy farmers over objections of their Midwestern counterparts.

"I'm running for president of the United States now and I intend to represent all the farmers of America," he said.

As president, I will vote for dairy farmers before I vote against them.

And finally, the coup de grace:

Kerry told his Wisconsin audience not to be wary of changing horses midstream — if the horse is drowning. "May I also suggest that we need a taller horse? You can get through deeper waters that way," he said, a reference to his five-inch height advantage over Bush.

Vertically challenged voters everywhere, take note!

Black-Market Plutonium Dealers Arrested In Kyrgyzstan

Another set of black-market dealers of nuclear material have been arrested in Kyrgyzstan -- this time dealing in plutonium:

Authorities in Kyrgyzstan say they have arrested two men who were trying to sell a large quantity of plutonium on the black market. The men were detained last week near the capital, Bishkek, but the news was not immediately released. ...

The national security service in the remote mountainous republic says it arrested two Kyrgyz citizens and confiscated 60 small containers containing plutonium-239. There is no information on exactly what quantity of plutonium was in the containers. Kyrgyz security agents tracked the men who were attempting to sell the plutonium and arrested them while posing as buyers.

The origin of the material is unknown.

Security officials say it is not used in Kyrgyzstan, so they think it may have come from one of the neighbouring republics or from Russia.
Earlier this year, another man was arrested in Kyrgyzstan attempting to sell a quantity of caesium-137, another highly radioactive substance.

These boys weren't pikers; 60 containers of plutonium isn't just a sample, it sounds like an armory. The Russians left a lot of this stuff behind when they pulled out of their former territories. One has to wonder how much more of it has been successfully traded before now.

Ban? What Ban?

This piece ran originally in the New York Sun last Friday for their weekend edition; I wrote it specifically for the Sun, but wanted to wait until their next edition to post it here.

In the wake of Ron Reagan’s appearance at the Democratic Convention, John Kerry has tried to make stem-cell research a featured policy difference between Kerry and George Bush. His campaign website talks about “ideologically-driven restrictions” from the Bush administration and promises to lift the “ban on stem cell research.” In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial outlining his economic plan, Kerry writes that he will restore America’s competitive edge by working to “end the ban on stem-cell research.” In fact, it may be the most consistent policy stance of the entire Kerry campaign.

The only problem for Kerry is that the ban doesn’t exist – and he knows it.

Stem cells are undifferentiated tissue cells that contain the coding and the ability to produce differentiated tissue, such as kidneys, lungs, even nerve tissue. Scientists at the National Institute of Health put stem cells into four different categories: adult, umbilical, fetal, and embryonic. Adult or hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are considered multipotent, meaning that they can generate a limited number of tissue differentiations, while pluripotent human embryonic stem cells (hEsc) appear able to generate anything short of a complete fetus.

Because of their pluripotent quality, hEsc generate the most interest among researchers. However, they can only be harvested by killing a fetus or embryo, either by abortion in the former case or by in-vitro fertilization and destruction of the resultant embryo. Both types raise serious ethical questions about the nature of life and the deliberate creation of human organisms specifically for their destruction and the harvesting of their tissue.

Stem-cell research first began 40 years ago when scientists developed bone-marrow therapies to treat diseases like leukemia. Research into embryonic stem cells only began in 1998 at the University of Wisconsin. After three years of debate over the ethics of this research and its implications even while hEsc lines continued to be created, the Bush administration made a decision to provide federal funding for hEsc research in August 2001, the first time any such funding had been available from the US government.

As a condition of the funding, Bush restricted federal monies to only the seventy hEsc lines that already existed. At the time, the Bush position attracted both criticism and praise from all sides of the abortion and stem-cell issues. On one hand, Bush kept new embryonic lines from eligibility for federal money, but somewhat against expectations, Bush took the pragmatic view that little gain would come from completely freezing out research on existing lines, where the question of ending a life had become moot. What Bush was not prepared to do then or now was to fund additional lines that would have to be created by the destruction of embryos or through abortions, both of which Bush has always staunchly opposed.

Speaking at a town-hall appearance during his re-election campaign in Derry, NH, Bush made his position and his principles clear when a woman with seriously ill relatives politely challenged him:

“It's a very sensitive issue because in order to create a stem cell line you have to destroy life. In other words, there's a -- you take an embryo, and you destroy the embryo, out of which comes a stem cell line. And before I made my decision, there [were] some 70 lines in existence. And I felt that those lines would be ample enough to be able to allow science to go forward to determine whether or not stem cell research would yield the results we all hope that it yields. And so I agreed to allow federal funding to go forward on existing stem cell lines so that further life would not be destroyed.

“Out of those 70 lines, some 22 are functional now. And out of [those] 22 lines, there [are] over 300 different projects that are going forward. In other words, there is an active effort to determine whether or not embryonic stem cells will yield the results we hope they yield.”

Bush did not issue any sort of ban on hEsc research. Private money can continue to fund hEsc research, as well as money from states and all other levels of government, and federal funding continues on approved hEsc lines. In fact, scientists can work simultaneously on approved and non-approved hEsc lines as long as the researchers use a cost-account approach to manage their funding to ensure that federal money is not applied to non-approved embryonic stem-cell lines.

The Bush administration enthusiastically supports HSC research and campaigns for increased funding. In contrast to hEsc research – which has not yet yielded any therapies, according to the NIH – HSC lines have created therapies and cures for leukemia, lymphoma, and several inherited blood disorders. Newer HSC research also shows promise in developing treatments and cures for diseases such as diabetes and kidney cancer.

Kerry and his campaign are well aware that there is no ban on stem-cell research, or even on federal funding for stem-cell research. Even their web site and Kerry’s WSJ article on economics use doubletalk in order to perpetuate the mythical “ban”.

The Kerry website uses both the assertion of the “ban on stem-cell research” and a more qualified “ideologically-driven restrictions on stem-cell research”, neither of which are true. No restrictions on the actual research have ever been implemented – only for federal funding of such. In his WSJ article, Kerry almost gets it right by arguing against Bush’s “restrictions on funding stem-cell research” before wallowing in hysterics by decrying the “ban on stem-cell research” in the very next paragraph. In neither place does Kerry identify the stem cells as embryonic, explain the other options that receive full federal support, or attempt to explore the ethical issues that arise from their use.

John Kerry used the stem-cell issue to cast George Bush as a scientific illiterate and his administration as a throwback to the Inquisition, forcing modern-day Galileos to renounce their science or face excommunication. However, the truth shows that Bush followed his core principles to reach a strikingly sophisticated and reasonable compromise that allowed all types of research to continue, even funding the existing embryonic lines for continued research. Those whose principles differ from Bush could make a reasonable rebuttal for unfettered funding of hEsc research, but Kerry doesn’t have the courage to make that argument. Kerry’s insistence on perpetrating myths instead of honest debate reveals the danger he represents, to real scientific exploration as well as to the American body politic.

Caption Contest Winners!

September 27th: I've spent the last four days among the rebels now, trying to make sense of their right-wing patois. It appears that their next mission will target John Kerry for what they call, in their partisan-operative manner, the truth-squad treatment. I'd report this in more detail, but one of their unbalanced and un-fact-checked third-stringers put my picture up on his site. My life might actually be in danger. Geraldo Rivera is a wimp. Courage ...

Mitch Berg from Shot In The Dark has chosen this week's Captain's Caption Contest winners, and he was impressed with this edition's entries. He even threw in a word I've never seen before -- "Fuchicapesta"? I think it means that you guys rock ....

Captain's Award (Strawberries And The Key) - Blogaddict:

Pursuant to my memo dated 09/07/04 regarding same issue:

It appears some of us have still not gotten the message. Allow me to reiterate; the tape dispenser in my possession shall remain so. It is clearly marked as property of "EVENING NEWS" - I don't know what else I need do to make that clear to you people, but rest assured, should it disappear again, there will be hell to pay.

Now, let's all get out there and make a difference.

DR

You Have The Conn #1 (His Next Story Is The Draft) - The Epistoler:

"500 dollars for a one-way ticket to Canada?!!" Doesn't Expedia know who I am?"

You Have The Conn #2 (One Born Every Sixty Minutes) - Eric Akawie:

Dear Mr. Mogatu,

Thank you for contacting me. Your story has touched me deeply and I would be honored to help you retrieve your father's money....

You Have The Conn #3 (Paranoia Strike Deep) - Eugene McGovern:

Damn! Little Green Footballs is blocking comments from my AOL account again!

Report To Sick Bay (For Plastic Surgery?) - Laurence Simon:

Well, I don't need bigger breasts, but I'll just forward this on to Lesley Stahl..."

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners! Remember, here at CQ, everyone's a winner -- just some of us have higher winning percentages than others. Comments on this post will remain open, as usual, in order for the winners to gloat, the others to disparage Mitch's intellect and/or my parentage, and for any other entries submitted just for the sheer enjoyment of amazing your friends and confounding your enemies.

Send me a photograph or an e-mail with a link to a great picture you think should be the subject of our next Caption Contest, and let me know if you'd like to be the guest judge!

Diana Kerry: The New Billy Carter, Or Worse?

Katherine Mangu-Ward at the Weekly Standard takes notice of Diana Kerry, who last week attempted to sow a rift in the wartime alliance between Australia and the US. Mangu-Ward at first notes that several presidents have had their embarassments with siblings, most notably Billy Carter and his lobbying for Libya and his penchant for beer. However, she quickly decides that this sibling may be different -- and more destructive:

The Weekend Australian's Roy Eccleston, who broke the story, added: "Asked if she believed the terrorist threat to Australians was now greater because of the support for Republican George W. Bush, Ms. Kerry said: 'The most recent attack was on the Australian embassy in Jakarta--I would have to say that.'" She also mentioned the October 2002 bombing of two Bali nightclubs, in which many of the victims were young Australians.

Alert readers, including Amanda Sokolski on this magazine's website, quickly picked up on errors in Ms. Kerry's timeline. The Bali bombing took place long before Australia got mixed up with those nasty Americans and their "wanton disregard for international law." And the September 9 attack on the Australian embassy was perpetrated by Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's Southeast Asia franchise, which has considered Australia a target since well before the Iraq war. Evidently, the details of this timeline were blurry for Ms. Kerry, who has been busy shuttling around the globe on her brother's behalf for the last several months.

All of which seems of a piece with the general Kerry cluelessness on terrorism that has been on display in this election cycle already. But her cluelessness is not limited to the US-Australian partnership or the war on terror. Diana Kerry expounds on conspiracy theories like Bush's supposed blocking of the overseas vote, which in any case would hardly be considered an electionbreaker.

Mangu-Ward discusses the curious lack of American media response Ms. Kerry's remarks received earlier, especially considering the damage her remarks were intended to do. She reviews the response Ms. Kerry got from the blogging community, including Captain's Quarters:

After the Command Post blog noted the Weekend Australian article, the comments section featured these reflections: "Dianna [sic] Kerry and John Kerry represent the Deaniac Demoncrat [sic] wing of the Islamofascist al-Queda [sic] party. . . . That is the Flip side! On the Flop side Diana and John Kerry represent the Michael Moore Muslim Moonbat brigades."

On the Rabble.ca chatboard, "Screaming Lord Byron" posted this insightful note after seeing Ms. Kerry speak earlier in the summer: "Had I seen her around town yesterday, I'd have thought 'What is Senator Kerry doing walking around Calgary dressed as a middle-aged businesswoman? That can't go down well with the swing voters.'"

On a more serious note, "Captain Ed" of the Captain's Quarters blog wrote: "Diana Kerry acts on orders from her brother John to undermine the Australian alliance."

For the second time in as many weeks, blogger conspiracy theorists may be onto something. There has been no discernible fallout from Ms. Kerry's comments at the campaign headquarters.

Mangu-Ward gives a bit of a misquote here but gets the essence of what I said last week, which was this: "Does John Kerry care more about grabbing power than he does about the United States? It certainly appears that way. Who gave the order for Diana Kerry to interfere with the Australian election? Who told her to act in a manner that is calculated to undermine the American-Australian partnership on the terror war? Frankly, not only should this disqualify him for the presidency, it should disqualify anyone involved in his campaign from ever holding public office. Those who condone this interference in a wartime alliance must be punished at the polls, and their party as a whole should be blocked from any power whatsoever until they atone for their actions.

The mainstream media should be embarassed to have missed this story, and Mangu-Ward should be commended for keeping it alive.

Bush Up By Eight: Gallup

In its most recent polling, a CNN/Gallup survey shows George Bush maintaining an eight-point lead over John Kerry among likely voters -- and in an unusual twist, his lead increases to thirteen points among registered voters:

The survey of likely voters showed 52 percent would vote for Bush and 44 percent for Kerry. A similar poll conducted from Sept. 13-15 showed Bush with 55 percent compared to Kerry at 42 percent.

However, among registered voters Bush's lead widened to 13 percent with 54 percent supporting the president and 41 percent backing Kerry. It was up from the earlier poll in mid-September that had 52 percent of registered voters behind Bush and 44 percent in favor of Kerry.

It exactly reverses its last polling numbers, exchanging the 8- and 13-point leads between the two measures. Bush's momentum keeps pushing along, and although the previous Gallup poll appeared to be more of an outlier, the similar results this time points to a substantial Bush lead that Kerry has yet to dent.

Palestinian Free Speech Commitment

The Palestinians showed their commitment to free speech and the renouncement of terror today in Gaza, where an armed gang kidnapped an Israeli CNN producer, beat his employees, and stole their equipment just a few minutes ago:

Four armed Palestinians kidnapped an Israeli citizen on Monday evening in Gaza City. The Israeli, Riad Abu Ali, works as an assistant producer for the American CNN television news network. ...

According to initial reports, the armed men tracked Abu Ali's car as he departed CNN's production offices in Gaza City. When he reached the city's Rimal neighborhood, the armed men stopped the car and grabbed Abu Ali.

"We had no indication that this was going to happen," said CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman Monday evening in a live broadcast. "This is something I've never experienced... These men were not very communicative. They asked which was of us was Riad and that was it."

Two other members of the CNN news team were beaten and their equipment was stolen.

Hopefully, Abu Ali -- whom I presume is an Israeli Arab -- will be released soon and relatively unharmed, although I doubt that's likely. Perhaps this incident will convince those within CNN and other news organizations that terrorists are not noble "freedom fighters" but gangsters who intend on turning the world into a turf war. Having a camera and a business card provides no more protection than, say, being a child buying a slice of pizza at a Jerusalem restauarant.

ABC's Hack Job On Blogs

A number of bloggers took the New York Times Magazine to task for a slanted and superficial look at bloggers in yesterday's edition, or in a strange surrender by Billmon of the Whiskey Bar in yesterday's LA Times. ABC provides much the same slant in a Kate Snow piece from yesterday about political bloggers that treats the Daily Kos with a lot more respect than Power Line:

That same day, Sen. John Kerry saluted as he walked onto a stage in West Palm Beach, Fla.

The gesture drew immediate ridicule online.

Someone calling himself "Hindrocket" posted a photo of the salute on a blog and wrote a warning to Kerry: "Every time Kerry brings up Vietnam, he opens himself to further body blows by the Swift Boat Vets."

Someone named Hindrocket? John Hinderaker identifies himself by name on his blog (although not on his posts), which should have made identification rather easy. If that was too hard for Snow, she could have taken the time to open up a copy of Time Magazine, where the "someone" she can't be bothered to identify and his blog are prominently featured in an article about the demise of CBS News -- a demise in which Power Line played the leading role. Or Snow could have turned on her television and watched John in any of at least a half-dozen appearances over the past two weeks on Fox, CNN, and local channels.

The fact that Snow has no idea who "Hindrocket" is or the blog for which he writes should automatically disqualify Snow from ever writing on the subject again.

However, when it comes to the Left, Snow suddenly appears much more hip to the blogosphere, and to the common courtesy of interviewing the subjects of her article:

Markos Moulistsas runs one of the most popular liberal blogs, called the Daily Kos.

"I was driving my family and friends and co-workers crazy ranting about the injustices that I saw everyday," the former Army veteran explains.

He also says bloggers act as gatekeepers to the overwhelming mass of information now available to anyone surfing the Web.

"It's very difficult to find the information that you, yourself are particularly interested in — and that's what the blogs do, they provide that filter."

The Daily Kos now has more than 200,000 readers a day. It is so successful, in fact, that conservatives say they're trying to emulate it.

Perhaps Redstate.org said they wanted to emulate Daily Kos, although I rather doubt they meant anything except Kos' traffic. No one on the right thinks too much of Markos Moulitsas any more since his "screw 'em" reaction to the butchery of four American contractors in Fallujah last April. Nor do too many of the lefty bloggers impress anyone, either, and Snow unwittingly demonstrates why in her piece. Here are a comparison of the big achievements on right and left in the blogosphere this year:

This past week, bloggers pushed hard on the story about controversial documents uncovered by CBS that spoke to President Bush's National Guard service. Many analysts believe all the talk on Weblogs played a part in forcing CBS to re-examine the issue and ultimately issue a statement.

Earlier, during the Republican convention in New York, a Republican congressman decided to drop his bid for re-election after a blog suggested he was gay. That blog is actively trying to out other members of Congress and staffers.

So while the conservative bloggers busily built a case showing that a major news organization perpetrated a fraud onto the American electorate and attempted to lie their way out of it, what did the port side of the blogosphere do? They managed to smear a Republican out of office by spreading gossip about his sexual orientation. What are they doing now? Looking for more of the same, when they're not all claiming that Karl Rove forged the Killian memos they continue to insist are "accurate" if not authentic.

Maybe ABC put Snow on the case to covertly undermine the credibility of lefty bloggers after all, as well as their own when it comes to political blogging. That leaves us with a critical issue: When did Karl start running ABC News, and doesn't that present a clear conflict of interest with his leadership at Fox? (hat tip: Jim W.)

Holy Wars

It's bad enough that the world is in the midst of the Third Jihad against the West, fought by lunatic-fringe Muslims against what they see as a Judeo-Christian conspiracy to keep them poor and ignorant. (They should really look into the various kleptocracies and mullahcracies that supposedly lead them instead.) But now we have the spectacle of internecine Christian riots at one of Christendom's holiest sites, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, reflecting shame and immaturity on all involved:

Greek Orthodox and Franciscan priests got into a fist fight Monday at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christianity's holiest shrine, after arguing over whether a door in the basilica should be closed during a procession. Dozens of people, including several Israeli police officers, were slightly hurt in the brawl at the shrine, built over the spot where tradition says Jesus was crucified and buried.

Four priests were detained, police spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby said.

Any time a news story starts out by talking about fistfights between Franciscan and Greek Orthodox priests, you know you have a head-shaker. What caused these competing Christians to violently brawl with each other in the place where Jesus Christ was buried after sacrificing himself to absolve us all from sin? A dispute over a door:

Monday's fight broke out during a procession of hundreds of Greek Orthodox worshippers commemorating the 4th century pilgrimage by Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, to Jerusalem. Tradition says that during the trip, Helena found the cross on which Jesus had been crucified.

Church officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that at one point, the procession passed a Roman Catholic chapel, and priests from both sides started arguing over whether the door to the chapel should be open or closed.

Club-wielding Israeli riot police broke up the fight, witnesses said. Afterward, the procession continued.

Both the Franciscans and the Greek Orthodox priests should be ashamed of themselves. As a Catholic, I'm appalled. It appears pride and vanity have taken over the efforts of both groups of priests at the Holy Sepulcher; otherwise, a door left ajar could have been reasonably resolved.

I note with wry irony that the resolution of the riot was left to our Jewish "elder brothers in faith", as the Pope has described the Christian relationship to Judaism. One can only imagine their irritation and amusement at having to crack the heads of these ostensible Christian officials to keep them from tearing each other to pieces.

Embarassing.

Israel Points The Finger

Israel has apparently decided that a forward strategy against terrorism has to include not only the West Bank and Gaza Strip but those nations who harbor and shelter them. Sound familiar? Israel gave notice to the closest such nation this morning, warning Syria that its friends will get them more trouble in the future:

Israel accused Syria on Monday of "directing terrorism" and warned it could face pre-emptive strikes against militants on its territory, but stopped short of saying it killed a Hamas leader in Damascus.

Syria had accused Israel of terrorism following the Palestinian militant's death in a car bombing on Sunday, three weeks after Hamas killed 16 Israelis in bombings Israel blamed on Hamas exiles in Damascus.

Targeting and killing the individual leaders of organizations that have sworn to destroy Israel and that set off bombs in pizzerias is not terrorism -- it's war, and Syria may need to learn the difference the hard way. Hamas, which Syria shelters and supports, has a long track record of violence targeting civilians including a long list of women and children left dead in their wake. To equate the killing of the people who order the murders to the deaths of the civilians they caused is little less than obscene.

Israel does not have the resources at the moment to wage traditional war against Syria while securing itself against the Palestinians in the territories. But the targeted assassination of the Hamas leader Izz Khalil shows that Israel has decided to take a page out of Hamas' strategy playbook and wage asymmetrical war against terrorists regardless of where they appear. It also serves to destabilize the Assad regime in Damascus if they appear unable to stop Israeli incursions even in their own capitol. In fact, in a ludicrous statement, Assad's state news agency decried the damage done to regional stability by Israel's action:

Syria's state news agency quoted an official source on Sunday as saying: "This terrorist act represents a grave development for which Israel shoulders responsibility as it stresses its intent to shake (regional) security and stability."

Israel intends to shake regional security, all right, as the region has continually demonstrated that it will not allow Israel any security of its own. Syria's statement equates to street gangs complaining about the destabilizing nature of Neighborhood Watch programs. If Assad wants to keep funding Hamas and Islamic Jihad and other bombthrowers, then Assad has committed an act of war by proxy -- and he shouldn't weep to the world media when Israel answers not in kind but in a legitimate act of response.

LA Times: Oregon In Play

Today's Los Angeles Times makes a startling admimssion that Oregon, one of the more liberal states and part of the West Coast block that normally is reliably "blue", is up for grabs this year -- even while misreporting the latest polling results:

Democrats have not lost a presidential election in Oregon since Ronald Reagan's landslide reelection two decades ago. And it would seem relatively safe territory for Sen. John F. Kerry: Anti-Iraq war sentiment runs strong here, and the state has had the nation's highest unemployment rate for parts of President Bush's term.

Yet the double-digit lead Kerry rode in polls here earlier this summer has narrowed sharply, reflecting his general slide in national polls but also the unease many Oregonians express about Kerry's credentials as a commander in chief.

Now, just a month after Kerry drew 40,000 to a boisterous waterfront rally in Portland, Oregon's seven electoral votes are in play. The Democrat will have to spend time and money to hold onto this state, which Al Gore narrowly won in 2000. And based on the nationwide political landscape, carrying Oregon appears vital to Kerry's presidential hopes.

For some reason, Sam Howe Verhovek chooses to misrepresent the latest polling data in Oregon, which doesn't show that Kerry's lead has "narrowed". It shows that Kerry's lead has completely disappeared. Bush leads in Oregon among likely voters in the two most recent polls at Real Clear Politics; SurveyUSA has Bush up by one while Mason-Dixon has Bush up by four. It's hard to believe that Verhovek could miss this data if he did any research into the subject, especially since his entire premise is that Kerry's polling lead supposedly narrowed.

Verhovek points to a measure on the Oregon ballot for part of Kerry's woes, an initiative which amends the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. As this measure is overwhelmingly popular in Oregon -- it leads 2-1 -- Verhovek assumes this translates into better turnout among conservatives and gives Bush a boost:

Bush's Oregon prospects could get a boost from a conservative turnout for a ballot measure that would amend the state's constitution to ban gay marriage. Current polls indicate the initiative is headed for passage by a wide margin. ...

In this initiative-happy state, the Bush campaign is hoping to benefit from a measure that would amend the state constitution to specifically define marriage as a heterosexual union. The most recent poll showed the measure passing 61% to 34%.

The so-called One Man, One Woman initiative is a big issue for some people in Gresham, a politically divided Portland suburb framed by a majestic Mt. Hood vista, and the voters who favor it appear squarely in the Bush camp.

It appears from the 61% favorable rating in liberal Oregon that it is a big issue, and not just for conservative voters. No one in their right mind who has watched Oregon local or state politics would call Oregon 61% "conservative." What the Democrats are discovering is that there is a far cry between traditional liberalism and the social engineering favored by the more radical Left, and that the more the latter is embraced by mainstream Democratic candidates, the more marginalized they become.

Another interpretation of this measure and others like it around the country (Missouri springs to mind) is not an anti-gay bias, although that certainly motivates some people, but rather a rejection of top-down dictates from appelate justices that create laws with no input from the electorate. The entire point of amending state constitutions is to remove state justices from carving out gay marriage from otherwise benign existing statements. It's a grassroots rejection of judicial activism -- and as such, it also plays to Bush's strength this year.

The Tyrolean Tiff

Evidently, the Italians feel the same way I do about German ambitions for a permanent UN Security Council seat. Germans expressed surprise that Italian FM Franco Frattini objected yesterday to the German initiative:

Germany and Italy locked horns yesterday after the government of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, opposed Berlin's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, accused Germany, supposedly one of the country's closest allies, of trying to divide Europe with its request for a seat by putting its national interests first.

"I will not accept competition based around national interests. That risks dividing Europe," he told the Italian newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica.

Of course, that is one good point -- why does Germany deserve a veto on the UNSC when Italy doesn't? Joschka Fischer told Italy that they should also campaign for a permanent seat on the Security Council in response to that question. Since when did the UN declare open bidding on veto powers anyway?

This effort to expand both the rotating and permanent memberships on the UNSC will do nothing except increase the level of paralysis in global diplomacy, which is exactly the intent of states such as Germany and France, who supports its eastern neighbor's campaign. The statists in the UN support the notion of the organization's mission as not so much a forum for global peace or to expand freedom, but as a battlefield for diplomatic war against the Anglo-American alliance, a counterweight to US power.

If that is their intent, they may be sorely disappointed in the result. The UNSC has already lost tremendous credibility with the American people thanks to its weak performance over 12 years with Saddam Hussein. If the UN stacks the deck with a raft of new vetoes that guarantee the Security Council can never act, the Americans and its true allies will simply bypass the travesty in the future.

Slow Day

Feeling a bit under the weather today -- sorry for the low output. I have a couple of things to post tonight still.

I hope everyone (else) had a great weekend!

Obeidi, Part II

The New York Times publishes today a follow-up of an article on Saddam's nuclear program that appeared in The Scotsman yesterday, which I noted here. The Times allows Dr. Mahdi Obeidi to speak for himself, which he already has done in a book, The Bomb In My Garden. Dr. Obeidi's article has a little bit for everyone on all sides of the Iraqi debate:

What was really going in Iraq before the American invasion last year? Iraq's nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait - there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a few years - but was stopped in its tracks by United Nations weapons inspectors after the Persian Gulf war and was never restarted. During the 1990's, the inspectors discovered all of the laboratories, machines and materials we had used in the nuclear program, and all were destroyed or otherwise incapacitated.

By 1998, when Saddam Hussein evicted the weapons inspectors from Iraq, all that was left was the dangerous knowledge of hundreds of scientists and the blueprints and prototype parts for the centrifuge, which I had buried under a tree in my garden.

In addition to the inspections, the sanctions that were put in place by the United Nations after the gulf war made reconstituting the program impossible. During the 1980's, we had relied heavily on the international black market for equipment and technology; the sanctions closed that avenue.

So far, Obeidi makes a strong case for weapons inspectors, save for one subtle piece that becomes apparent later on: the Iraqis already had the expertise and had managed to hide enough of their research, the most critical of it in Obeidi's own garden.

Another factor in the mothballing of the program was that Saddam Hussein was profiting handsomely from the United Nations oil-for-food program, building palaces around the country with the money he skimmed. I think he didn't want to risk losing this revenue stream by trying to restart a secret weapons program.

Of course Saddam didn't want to openly rock the boat while stuffing his bank accounts with Western cash, primarily from the same nations that opposed the eventual effort that deposed him. On the other hand, there wasn't much boat-rocking with which to be concerned, when many of the same people -- including the UN bureaucracy entrusted to enforcing and and maintaining the economic sanctions -- directly benefitted from Saddam's kickbacks. The monetary motivation to keep things running smoothly existed in spades on all sides except the Iraqi people, whose money went everywhere except onto their plates.

Obeidi then emphasizes the real threat of leaving Saddam in power, as I noted yesterday:

Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers. The sanctions and the lucrative oil-for-food program had served as powerful deterrents, but world events - like Iran's current efforts to step up its nuclear ambitions - might well have changed the situation.

Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary. And there is no question that we could have done so very quickly. In the late 1980's, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen. In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam Hussein ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts.

The sanctions regime would not have lasted forever, and even after 9/11 UN members pressed for an end to it and a restoration of Saddam as a major trading partner. With billions in cash reserves from OFF corruption and billions more coming in from legitimate trade, Saddam could have used the core of his dormant nuclear research to quickly reconstitute an enormous threat -- and by hiding his chief researcher and all of the necessary data, it would have been, as Obeidi says, a snap.

And let's not forget the revelation last night that a number of Iraqi nuclear scientists and their materials were smuggled into Syria just before the invasion. Obeidi warns the world of the danger presented by his former colleagues:

So what now? The dictator may be gone, but that doesn't mean the nuclear problem is behind us. Even under the watchful eyes of Saddam Hussein's security services, there were worries that our scientists might escape to other countries or sell their knowledge to the highest bidder. This expertise is even more valuable today, with nuclear technology ever more available on the black market and a proliferation of peaceful energy programs around the globe that use equipment easily converted to military use.

We are seeing that exact dynamic in Syria's attempts to transfer these scientists to Teheran -- the Southwest Asian nation believed to be closest to developing their own nuclear weaponry and possessing the missile technology to deliver it anywhere in the region.

Obeidi's experience and testimony underscores the need for the removal of dictators who are determined to acquire WMD. No amount of inspections and sanctions will quench their thirst for the weapons they feel will cause the West to falter rather than confront.